[A-List] Mike Davis: Sinister Symmetry

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2062422,00.html>
Sinister symmetry

Both Iraq's car bombers and the White House see the Shia resurgence
and Iran as the main enemies

Mike Davis
Saturday April 21, 2007
The Guardian

Last Wednesday, following the car bomb massacre of nearly 200 people
in Baghdad, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada,
paid a visit to the lunatic asylum known as the White House to inform
its chief inmate that "the war is lost". He referred to the "extreme
violence" in Baghdad as proof that US military strategy was now
bankrupt.

Reid's declaration is unprecedented in modern US politics, but the
senator is no gloating peacenik. Indeed, he angered fellow Democrats
last year with his endorsement of the administration's plan for a
troop "surge" in Baghdad. If he now risks predictable Cheney-Rove
accusations of counselling "surrender", it is because he carries moral
power of attorney from influential Republicans as well as Democrats.
Just as the Democratic party was splintered in 1968 by the war in
Indochina, the Republicans are beginning to split over the madness of
the continuing occupation of Iraq.

Although Democrats warned last autumn that the "surge" was nothing
more than a "Hail Mary pass" (the ultimate desperation tactic in
American football), there was a camp of fence-straddlers in Congress
who thought General David Petraeus might win the battle of Baghdad. In
the event, the "surge" hasn't survived round one.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that weapons of mass destruction do
actually exist in Iraq: they are called car bombs, and their
detonation has destroyed any idea that Gen Petraeus's brigades can
secure Baghdad, or that the Americans can protect their newly
purchased Sunni allies in Anbar province.

The statistics are implacable: since the "surge" began in February,
Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents have mounted at least 93 car bombings,
killing or wounding more than 4,000. Further, from the start of the
occupation in 2003, there have been more than 1,050 deadly car and
truck bombings. The total civilian death total from vehicle explosions
now amounts to about 30,000.

The obvious litmus test of the "surge" is the ability of Gen Petraeus
and the Maliki government to guarantee public safety. The famous
Sadriya market on the largely Shia east bank of the Tigris, for
instance, has long been a magnet for sectarian car bombers. When, at
the beginning of this year, the Americans drove out the guards from
Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, it was with the reassurance that they would
be replaced with Iraqi-American patrols. Instead another suicide
truck-bomber devastated the market in early February, killing 140
shoppers and wounding 300.

Since the "surge" began, other truck bombers have destroyed Baghdad's
book bazaar along Mutanabi Street, killing 30 and probably the last
hopes of an Iraqi intellectual renaissance; and they brought down
Sarafiya bridge, a historic symbol of the city's unity.

The bombers have added new ingredients of horror. The most alarming
was the appearance in January of trucks carrying "dirty" bombs made
with chlorine gas tanks. These continue to terrorise Sunnis in Anbar,
who have repudiated the local franchise of al-Qaida; but there is
little doubt dirty bombs are coming to Baghdad and Shia cities as
well. The bombers obviously calculate that the carnage will bring
about an apocalyptic confrontation with the Americans. And since the
Bush administration now finds evidence of Iranian subversion
everywhere, a Shia insurrection might be the trigger for an attack on
Iran.

A sinister symmetry of strategic perception (the Shia resurgence and
Iran as main enemies), in other words, seems increasingly to ally
White House circles with the occult bombers. No wonder ordinarily
cautious Harry Reid acted so boldly, or that prominent Republicans
wish John Kerry had won in 2004.

· Mike Davis is the author of Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car
Bomb miked@xxxxxxx

--
Yoshie