[A-List] Re: Mike Davis: Sinister Symmetry

[CeJ <jannuzi@xxxxxxxxx>]

> 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 whole piece reeks--like so many of these pieces--of the sort of
establishment thinking that says the Bush-led war and occupation has
been mismanaged. It seems quite likely that it is US allies or
hirelings or even agents planting the bombs (classic 'counter
insurgency tactics if the goal is to splinter a Resistance coalition).
If only we could back most people up in this discussion to their
assumptions and preconceptions instead of letting them set the terms
of the discussion and debate, then we would see we are wasting our
time with this sort of journalism. It's like saying you want to
discuss peace with Israel instead of the occupations of Palestine and
Lebanon. The US's long term goal in Iraq is a cooperative government
or no central government or all (and that is about where they have
arrived, except it makes military operations that much harder). The
main tool used to reinforce that position  the US military's use of
violence and death. They are the WMD in Iraq.

The sinister symmetry is the use of Israeli (who have helped set up
'Kurdistan' and pioneered 'counter-resistance' terrorism in the ME),
Kurdish, and mostly secular Sunni and Shia collaborators (nominally
'Islamic conservatives' or 'moderates') to get what they want in Iraq
or in its oil-rich fragments.

CJ