Re: AUT: Iraq, Korea, Islamic Fundamentalism

["Hex *" <shatterbreakseance@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Reply to Thiago,

First, about Korea.  You may be right about 3000 slaughtered workers (which
is an event I'm not familiar with), and it's not my intention to paint
'democratization' as some sort of bloodless, joyous event, but my point to
Andrew was that the US managed to shape a democratic state out of a movement
of millions, demonstrating that America can certainly tolerate the existence
of a democracy in the third world and putting the lie to the idea that
dictatorships must reign everywhere except the first world.

Anyways,

Hex (earlier):
>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.?

Thiago: 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.

Hex: I think you misread how desperately the US needs an election in Iraq.
It needs an Iraqi face on the Iraqi government, and as I wrote to Andrew,
there are now 150+ political parties registered for elections in January.
Preparations are well underway.  Shi'ite clerics may certainly win, but I
don?t think they?ll compare to someone like Saddam or even Allawi.  Sadr was
brutal, but was by all means on a fringe.  The election of a Shiite cleric
also won?t guarantee the imposition of Shari'a law, though it could happen.
I would hope that we could expect at the very least the same energetic
mobilization brought to bear earlier this year against the Family law
reforms, which, along with the pressure of secular government elements,
defeated the measure.

>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.

Thiago: 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.

Hex: Utility instability at least has been _clearly_ linked to sabotage
attacks, read any Iraqi blog from Baghdad.  But you're right that the new
Iraqi state has proven to be uniquely incompetent.  And it's grounds for a
total overthrow.  Regarding social instability, to a large extent yes the US
simply doesn't care.  But that doesn't mean Iraqis don't.

On a side note, there have been some papers that have asserted that
instability actually benefits American interests (one was "Dominant Capital
and the New Wars"), and the US has even allegedly targeted whole
neighborhoods for utility shortages, but you can't have it both ways.  Is
the US there to extract profit and reconstruct an indigenous capitalism in
its own interest or, is it there to cause instability and justify its own
presence?

I think it?s a tough question, with evidence on both sides.  For instance,
surely, the US wants to free up its forces for potential action in both Iran
and North Korea, to at least make the threats it?s leveling right now
credible.  On that account they want to seal up the coherence of the Iraqi
state via the municipal police, National Guard, army etc. and get out, and
so we could frame their actions in this context.  The reality however is
much different, not just taking into account the security situation and all
the forces working on it, but the simple fact that the US is failing
significantly to ?Iraqify? the police apparatus, globalsecurity.org is for
instance reporting that progress on such a change has actually regressed
from 2003, that no progress has been made in 2004.  This fact seems to
indicate that the US is satisfied with sending soldiers to their deaths in
what could be an endless occupation.

>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.

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

Hex:  Well if you're referring to the alleged murder of seven insurgents in
a Baghdad prison, that happened _one week_ before the provisional government
took power and he was appointed PM.  It was clearly bad press for the US and
had to be quashed out of the mainstream, in other words it wasn?t in their
interests to appoint a murderer in the vigilante sense. Now if you meant
that as a CIA/Muk asset he was a murderer, well yes, but many heads of state
have been murderers, so let?s not gasp in surprise.

>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.

Thiago: 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.

Hex: Obviously the US? track record on bringing ?democracy? is very poor.
You asked me for examples of them ?succeeding? and I gave you some.  It
doesn?t change the fact that yes, the United States is trying to bring a
democracy to Iraq, that it is being undermined, politically, by an
insurgency, which is varied in its aims and composition, but is composed
principally of groups lobbying in the interests of certain sections of the
ruling class which feel excluded.  As I?ve argued, the installation of a
democratic capitalism is very much coextensive with America?s oil interests
in Iraq.  The oil supply is nationalized and will work via joint-venture
projects, thus, administrative control of the oil sector means control over
the state, political control.  This is then the prize of the democratic
process and a reason for the ruling class to engage in the machinations of
elections etc.  The US and the Iraqi state are less interested in a
dictatorship (while keeping it as an option), more interested in pacifying
the unruly sectors of the ruling class, negotiating with the carrot/stick
and eventually, bribery if things get too uncontrollable.

Now, about Islamic Fundamentalism etc.

>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.

Thiago: 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.

Hex: Well, the lines obviously cross, don?t they?  How can you say that the
Taliban, as an example of a pure Wahhabi-influenced fundamentalism, by
banning the internet or television for example is not anti-modernist?  When
Islamic fundamentalism emerges as a societal governance strategy I think it
certainly implies certain extraordinary controls that may take the namesake
of opposition to ?the West? but really are more naked attempts at thought
and action control.  The Wahhabi hatred of music for example, or the
Ikhwan?s hostility towards technology, religious injunctions not to produce
poetry...the bin baz fatwa of 1969 that declared that the earth is flat, how
are you gonna tell me these aren?t anti-modern?  OBL?s invocations to piety,
morality, against decadence etc.  The lines cross.  It is definitely worth
noting that Islamic fundamentalism does not always take an anti-modern
stance, that it is very capable of sustaining itself within modernity, but
there are different wings of the phenomenon.  The networks that arise from
Wahhabism for example could be erupted by modernity, not based on any ?fanta
or fatwa? projection, but simply that the rewards of cosmopolitanism, women
outside the household, secular education, societal project etc. could
supplant the retrenchment of these liberties by ruling classes in crisis.
And in many ways, this implies the individual relatively acting for herself
rather than for a collective, for an identity, under a fatwa etc.  I think
that Iraq and its history of progressivism is a good example of how
modernism can ward off the idiotic projects of Islamists.

But it?s very possible that their ?modernism? will fail.

And as long as we?re repeating ourselves, I want to clarify that I am not
_for_ the US completing its goals in Iraq.  The polemic I wrote was written
to consider how we could undermine it as it goes along in the interests of
communism; this was very much with a Kerry victory in mind; Bush?s win was a
surprise, and has by now made a few things clear.  First, absent of either
total chaos or revolution in Iraq or the US, the US military is there to
stay.  Even post-elections the occupation will hardly be scaled back.  So a
struggle against occupation is a revolutionary struggle, one which if we?re
serious about showing solidarity with Iraqis, we owe it to them to look at
all sides of the situation.

The removal of force which the Americans currently apply will certainly
result in some factions either seizing power or becoming much more
influential.  Not to mention the likely murder of those deemed
?collaborators?.  And yet, it seems obvious at this point that by preserving
much of this chaotic environment, the coalition creates the justification
for its presence.  The US shows daily that it can?t de-Ba?athify Iraq.
Prospects for a NATO mission, assistance by the French, Germans or Russians
have all fallen through.  The UN as far as I understand will only touch
elections.  The situation is ugly.  Perhaps obnoxiously banal but more and
more obvious is that the only way we can really show solidarity with Iraqis
is by the radical overthrow of the systemization of barbarism itself.

Sphinx




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