Category: War on Terror

Democracy in Iraq

I am joining the Iraq bandwagon a little late – but better late than never. And as Guessedworker will attest to this, I have a full litany of excuses for having been AWOL since Christmas. It has been a very hectic time – first a good holiday, then too much work and also moving houses, which is always a nightmare.

Anyway, I have tried to the extent possible to keep up with developments and also with the musings at our little corner here. I have written a few times about Iraq in these pages and endeavour to do so again. And I risk starting a fratricidal conflict here – as I am going to take the opposite view from our colleague John Ray.

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Posted by Phil Peterson on Sunday, February 6, 2005 at 06:47 AM in War on Terror
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The neocons were right!

As Stephen Schwartz says:

The news from Iraq is spectacularly good: local authorities estimate almost 75 percent of the electorate has voted. This is a triumph for every Iraqi, for America, for the Muslim world—indeed, for the whole world. But it is a particular victory for an exceedingly small group in Washington: those who maintained confidence in the appeal of democracy, in the commonsense and intelligence of the Iraqis, and in the correctness of the path taken by President George W. Bush to Baghdad and beyond.

As stated, the group of non-Iraqis in America entitled to exult is tiny: it consists of President Bush himself, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, certain other members of the cabinet and defense establishment, and a highly exclusive media list: Bill Kristol and crew at The Weekly Standard, myself and some others writing on TCS and a handful of other publications. (I won’t be modest about this.)

And that, folks, is about it. The global humanitarian services industry was worst about Iraq: the experienced electoral monitors chickened out of covering the balloting. The Europeans, of course, have nothing but bad to say about Baghdad, aside from British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But the American political and media class, the latter above all, spent the months since President Bush’s reelection searching desperately for reasons the Iraqi election was bound to fail…

Iraqis voted the way Nicaraguans voted: enthusiastically, even deliriously so. Baghdad’s voting urns are very likely to become, for the presidency of George W. Bush, what the fall of the Berlin Wall, which made the Nicaraguan election possible, was to that of Ronald Reagan. Bush may be judged as great as Reagan, and the Republican Party may permanently become a heroic force for global liberation.

Posted by jonjayray on Tuesday, February 1, 2005 at 12:45 AM in War on Terror
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Quick Answers for the Iraq War

Mr. Stephen Quick, master of Old Blind Dog, visited MR as an apostle George Bush’s ultramontane apocalyptic call for world-wide democratic revolution. The original thread is here.

This is a sample of Mr. Quick’s thinking:

I’m irritated that we have yet to take down Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. He [Bush] isn’t moving fast enough.

I want as many of them dead as it takes for their cult (islam) to die out.

Look here, democracy is the only future for the whole world. If you think otherwise you are a fool.

During his exposition I asked Quick a series of Iraq war questions. This ad-hoc interview was then made a separate post, here. It was then that Stephen Quick asked me to answer the questions I posed to him. Though I must summarize my Iraq war stance first.

Summary:

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Posted by leslie on Saturday, January 29, 2005 at 05:59 PM in War on Terror
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Flood Tide of War Rage

“…it may obliterate the low Illinois shore to a horizon of water, while in its bed it runs with a speed such that no man or beast can survive in it. At such times, it carries down human bodies, cattle and houses”. T.S.  Eliot

The damn burst on September 11th but the flood is yet to crest.

Recently, Mr. Stephen Quick and I joined in a conversation about the war in Iraq.  The following is Mr. Quick’s thinking, however turbulent, about the Iraq war.
———————————————————
Mr Quick:

Do you really believe President Bush when he says Democracy is the future for Iraq?

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Posted by leslie on Thursday, January 27, 2005 at 07:11 PM in War on Terror
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Fr. Bush’s Vatican – a Demise of American Christianity

Tragically many Christians see President Bush as a righteous defender of the Faith; perhaps in much the same way our medieval ancestors honored the Pope, or Christian monarchs. But Christianity in America is an experience radically different than of the European heartland, with the partial exception of Great Britain.

American Christianity is a balanced formulation of protestant morality and democratic plurality. According to historian Paul Johnson this formula was present at the founding of the nation, and persists. [1]

In the post-war period American Christianity has seen a recession of the Christian element and a procession of the democratic. As the Christian element diminishes the democratic element - as if to mask its newfound muscularity - cloaks itself in sacred Christian rhetoric; a clever shell game.

This is a disturbing development for America and Christians. For instead of promoting the universality of Christ’s message – with a minimum of Christian dogma - America is creating a perverted orthodoxy with Christianity hopelessly entangled in democratic imperialism, engaged by military force.

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Posted by leslie on Saturday, January 22, 2005 at 10:46 PM in Christianity,  War on Terror
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He did not once say the word, “Iraq”

Well, it’s a war.  People die in wars.  So that’s alright then.  No need to mention it.  Right?

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, January 21, 2005 at 03:58 PM in War on Terror
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Fallujah Folly and the future of Iraq

As the War Nerd wrote with such precision just a month ago, the US should have taken Fallujah in April when things were spinning out of control. But the desire to get Bush re-elected and the desire to keep so much blood and gore off the TVs before early November meant that the “insurgents” got sufficient notice of what would happen next. And the smarter and more experienced ones left the town lock, stock and barrel leaving behind the inexperienced boys to shoot the invading Americans when the US finally decided to go in.

But what Fallujah seems to have accomplished for the Iraqi resistance is something of an ever greater magnitude. By concentrating American forces in a town where there are fewer insurgents, it increased the capacity for the insurgents to attack Americans elsewhere in Iraq as the density of American soldiers outside Fallujah reduced somewhat. This is now clearly visible in the increased attacks on various targets across the country. Reuters reports another 23 dead in attacks that were carried out earlier today. November was the deadliest month yet and that is saying something.

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Posted by Phil Peterson on Sunday, December 5, 2004 at 01:53 PM in War on Terror
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Iraq, 9/11 and the state of the West

At the risk of beating the same drum as the formidable Matt Nuenke, I publish my first post here on a subject which I believe reveals more about the state of the post-modern West than any other: 9-11 and Iraq.

Much ink has been spilled on this, the most remarkable of follies in American history. Some of that ink speaks for folly, issuing a call to arms for further action against Iran, Syria and a few other Neocon favourites in the Middle East. Traditional conservatives and Paleos have, in contrast, attempted to demonstrate the nature of this folly and how the “project” has little to do with conservatism properly understood.

With President Bush running for re-election on essentially one slogan: “9-11 changed America”, it is perhaps a good time to take stock of where America - and where the West - stands after that event.

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Posted by Phil Peterson on Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 07:28 AM in War on Terror
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Why the war in Iraq will fail

As the Presidential Elections draw towards their close in the United States, Kerry and Bush strive with increasing intensity to assure us that each is uniquely able to defend America.  But in all the claim and counter-claim the assumption that there can actually be such a thing as a War on Terror goes unchallenged.

Well, is that so surprising?  Modern warfare has always been instigated by the elite and, of course, fought by the masses.  It was won when the elite found it too costly or simply ran out of resources to fight on - usually a shortage of men, materials and/or territory.  The enemy, meanwhile, was crushed as a definable materialistic unit, not as an abstract set of attitudes emanating from the common man.  Warfare was always about governments indoctrinating the people about the rightness of their cause against the enemy, and the people rallying around the cause until victory or defeat was at hand.  Moreover, the victor wrote the history, defining how and why the war was started and what was at stake.

The current conflict is far different, and few are able to comprehend the consequences of fighting such a war using the old assumptions.

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Posted by Matt Nuenke on Thursday, October 28, 2004 at 08:25 AM in War on Terror
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