Re: AUT: Gentle, gentle brutality

[Thiago Oppermann <difference_3ngine@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 21/11/2004 1:52 PM, "Hex *" <shatterbreakseance@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> There's brutality on both sides.  The difference is that you were
> _glorifying_ the barbarity of the Iraqi 'resistance'.

I do no such thing. Do I think it is glorious? No. I said as much,
repeatedly. You need to learn to read.

> Obviously the
> coalition is brutal, but it also relatively more accountable in a legal
> fashion, via media, war legalities etc.   And, correct me if I'm wrong, but
> if the Iraqi people don't like the US fascists, don't they at least get a
> chance to vote them out (or at least their avatars) in January?  Allawi
> etc.?

That's really very funny.  I mean, you obviously know that if elections were
held, Shi'ite clerics would win. That's why elections aren't held, and why
they will be delayed, cancelled, fudged.

You should look at the example of North Korea. They had elections there too
- which were completely farcical. Korea, not Vietnam, is the proper
comparison, if you ask me.

>
> I have no idea why you think I'm saying that people 'shouldn't' oppose Iraqi
> fascism (in whatever form it comes).  They should.  But yes, I very much see
> differences between the Allawi government and one that the 'resistance'
> could bring into power.

I don't. I think the Allawi government is not so dissimilar from the Saddam
government, except it is not as competent.

>The way I look at the current Iraqi government, yes
> it's in a crisis form, and this crisis form as capitalism does, takes on the
> characteristics of fascism, i.e. a working class bound to the state (current
> prohibition of unions besides the IFTU), curfews, emergency laws etc.  The
> difference is that those who would come to power would be _exactly the same_
> except with fascism as an _ideology_, more of an external debt, and likely
> more extreme discipline and revanchism against 'collaborators', not to
> mention the potential for internal sectarian warfare as the Shiite wrath
> brigades are now showing a glimpse of.

I think you put far too much faith on ideology as a source of containment
rather than hypocrisy. If these people go around doing everything your
theocrats do, but not talking the talk, what's the difference?

These people will succeed in little except legitimating the religious order.

>
> Actually, the US has _delayed_ elections, and the electricity isn't on
> mainly because of sabotage and a completely unstable social environment
> which hardly grants reconstruction its walk about town.

Well, you'd believe anything then. Why trust Rumsfeld and these proven liars
to tell the truth about Iraq, when countless journalists -Klein, Cockburn
and Fisk come to mind - attest to the incompetence, corruption, waste and
lack of interest that lies behind the "unstable social environment". You
know, there are 130,000 troops in the country. That might have something to
do with the instability.


> Yes, the US has
> handed the society over to big business, isn't that exactly capitalism?
> They've also appointed a PM who is a murderer though I doubt they actually
> knew that when they appointed him.

 He was a CIA asset, after he had been a Mukhabarat asset. They knew
everything about him. You must also believe in Santa Claus.

>  But they have made steps on their road
> to liberal democracy.  There are elections to be held, with 56 parties
> putting up candidates.  Freedom of speech is relative, as I wrote to Andrew,
> it's the freedom to criticize, but it's unarguably deeper than under Saddam.

Sure, but why isn't it complete? That's what you want to ask. Why is it that
the US is reproducing the same crappy middle eastern tinpot dictator style
of government in Iraq that they have encouraged everywhere else, including,
of course, Palestine. It's not by accident, or incompetence, or the
nastyness of the Iraqi people.

> That means freedom of the press, radio, media generally, and needless to
> say these are compromised by the crisis form of the state.  Church (mosque)
> and state are seperated, _fractiously_, against the will of sectors of the
> Iraqi ruling class.  I'm not saying proles have to die for this set of
> values, which constantly come up short.  They shouldn't have illusions about
> them and shouldn't work against themselves by trying to expand them, at
> least in the formal sense, but they should recognize that an Iraqi state
> brought into power by the 'resistance' would be much worse on any of these
> various points and ultimately stifle what autonomy is being carved out by
> the working class in these moments of chaos.

I am amazed that you buy the 'state of emergency' justification. Peter was
right about you.

>
>> Look at Iran for a moment. There is a society which I
>> really wish Iraq did not become, but which is, in
>> fact, a functioning democracy with levels of hypocrisy
>> not that much higher than the US. It is not, by any
>> means, a fascist society.
>
> Now, you can get at me all you want for defending what advances have been
> brought by the new Iraqi state, but calling Iran a 'functioning democracy'
> is just hilarious.  The very form of government in Iran includes an
> unaccountable supreme leader to begin with, and below him a council of
> guardians which investigates every single piece of legislation passed by the
> parliament to make sure it is acceptable to Islamic law.  It also has
> influence on elections and has used this influence to severely restrict the
> reformists.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3491193.stm  Iran has
> also murdered workers on the picket line and has a modern history of
> murdering young adults for indiscretions so tiny as having a relationship
> without the consent of their parents.  What is your stake in defending Iran?

You're quite incapable of reading huh? I don't have any stake in defending
Iran, which is why I don't defend Iran. I think that as far as it goes, they
have a fuctioning democracy - compared to the American democracy they
actually have choices, people say things that are consequential and there
are high rates of participation. It's also, as I said, a society ultimately
vetoed by theocrats. It's not a good society (I said this, and I don't like
repeating myself). But the hypocrisy involved is not much more extreme than
that in the US system, which is quite extraordinary. It's not less
hypocritical either (that why I included the phrase "not much more", which
is different from "less")


>
>> It's not a good society to
>> live in, but it is also a fairer society to that which
>> existed before the revolution. Elections are held and
>> there are meaningful alternatives for people to vote
>> for. There is a religious police and theocrats with
>> the last word, but their position is increasingly
>> precarious, a decay in power that would be much faster
>> if they could not conjure external threats: the great
>> continuity of terror in postcolonial societies is that
>> where once security services terrorized on behalf of
>> the foreign power, the new secuirty services
>> terrorize...on behalf of the existenc of a foreign
>> enemy.
>
> Yes...the Iranian reformists would win out as soon as the 'external threat'
> dissapears.  The fact is that threats can _always be conjured up_ and you
> _can't_ reform away theocracy.  The council of guardians is not going to
> dissolve itself and the supreme leader isn't just going to insert himself in
> a balance of powers.  These are functions inimical to the function of the
> state as an Islamic republic.

All indications are that the Iranian people (more so than the tame
reformists) were moving into a position to challenge the social order when
the US gave the Mullahs a massive shot in the arm. The US doesn't do this
because they are stupid. They do this because they want Iran to collapse,
not to become a nice democratic society. They know very well that although
there are serious demands for reform and freedom,  the US is not well liked.

> You ask for examples of democracies brought by the United States, directly,
> Japanese and German democracy, of course, and why doesn't Afghanistan count?
> Sure it was an absurd election, but the UN was all over it, and declared
> it legitimate.

Ok so, you get two and bit, ignoring for a moment just how much of a
democracy Japan really is. I get: Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Haiti, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Vietnam, Korea,  Serbia with or
without Kosovo and Greece to mention only some of the ones where the
intervention was justified as democratic.

But this doesn¹t do justice to the qualitative difference - US intentions in
Germany were radically different to their intentions in the Middle East, and
they there, let's remember, they also recycled a lot of the old regime over.
A disgusting episode, yet it was pursued by Eisenhower and Truman, which
were incomparably more commited to social justice and democracy than Bush -
which is a sign of how utterly awful Bush is.

>>
>> I also fail to see how you think that the
>> transformation of state controlled capitalism into
>> freemarked capitalism will inculcate any great respect
>> for liberal values. In the US, the precise opposite is
>> obvious everywhere: capitalism makes progressive
>> values seem like the enemy to a majority of the
>> working class, and creates a massive incentive towards
>> religious/cultural resistance which is doomed before
>> it starts in the US, but possibly not in Iraq. In the
>> middle east, religious resistance to 'modernity' (in
>> fact, a highly modern ideology) is the default
>> orientation of majority that dwarfs the christian
>> right in the US.
>
> Here you make a jump.  From the first sentence, 'liberal values' to
> 'progressive values'.  Yes, I believe the de-cartelization of capitalism is
> the first step towards the expansion of bourgeois liberty values, but that
> doesn't mean that people are necessarily going to embrace 'progressive'
> values, i.e. start hugging gays on haifa street or something.

First you thought I called you queer when I had said you were stupid, now
this...

Really, you think that the cartel of multinationals affiliated with the Bush
administration are engaged in 'decartelization' in Iraq? That's bonkers.


>The process
> of destroying the fascist values of Islamic fundamentalism (to the extent
> that they are gaining popularity in Iraq) may simply be, as Peter has said,
> one of the working class arming itself against its horrors.

They are not, to repeat, fascist values. You should take the time and read
Islamic fundamentalist writings. I recommend Shabbir Akhtar "The Final
Imperative".


>What is likely
> in the event of the 'success' of regime change, is the slow discrediting of
> such an alternative to modernity by modernity itself.   I don't think either
> option is adequate, the former because it basically puts the Iraqi exploited
> up against a movement that has so far managed to capitalize off of all of
> its suffering while maneuvering against it.  The latter because it will take
> way too fucking long.

So we'll raze their towns because we're impatient? Huh? I am the brutalist.

Again: political Islam is not an "alterntive to modernity" and it cannot be
smitten by 'modernity', or any other such ghost. Political islam is a very
modern social formation, as anyone who's played Civilization II knows, and
for what's worth, Sid Meyer has a better grasp of this thing than you do.
Political islam is opposed to westernization; read their writings - they are
full of disquisitions on the theme of "Is Modernization equal to
Westernization". The 'west', ie. America, by "discrediting" the alternative
will really only discredit itself. America is simply the worst possible
teacher in this regard. They should get out ASAP.

Thiago












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