“Those hopeless clods, blundering into Iraq without knowing a damn thing about it. They botched an occupation which might otherwise have gone smoothly. Imagine if individuals of character and integrity, with a real understanding of the West’s colonialist history in Iraq, an understanding of Muslim sensibilities, and a bit of bureaucratic savvy to boot, had been a part of the occupation.”

Except that, of course, the incompetence of the upper management in Iraq notwithstanding, there were many people of real ability, depth and nerve involved in that adventure. Rory Stewart was one of them, and he served as deputy governor of Amarah and then Nasiriyah, both in the South of Iraq. He is also a writer of real ability. He has written a book about his experiences, the upshot of which is bleak for anyone inclined to lean heavily on the incompetence defense for the disasters of the occupation. For he seems to have gone at the work of reconstruction and occupation with great energy, skill and determination, and he left with virtually nothing to show for it. Prince of the Marshes tells his story, and tells it well.

Vera Brittain. Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925

Vera Brittain lost her young fiance in World War I, and then two dear friends, and finally her brother. In 1915, she left Oxford to work as a nurse, caring for wounded soldiers, first in Britain, then Malta, and finally France. Her account of the war, and its shattering effects on her entire generation, is powerful, bitter, and moving. At the close of the war, she resumed her studies at Oxford, and on graduating moved on to a career as a novelist, journalist, and activist for internationalism and feminism. The whole tale is engaging, and Brittain writes persuasively and incisively about her causes, especially feminism. But it is the four deaths, and the struggle that follows to accept and understand the senseless waste of talent and energy they represented, that are so moving, and that form the emotional core of the story.

This is a wonderful book, tying together the personal and the political together in way that illuminates each. I got it out of the library after reading about it here. I’m grateful for the recommendation.

I really wanted to read this review, but after reading its first sentence, I realized that logic prevents me from doing so¹:

If you are interested enough in epistemology to be reading this review, then you must read the marvelous book being reviewed.

—
1. Chris, this post is meant to make us philosophy types chuckle. No need to point out all the ways in which logic does in fact allow me to read the review and not the book. Just go quietly back to preventing future deaths of little kittens, OK?

(Thanks to noz in comments for helping me figure out how to make makeshift footnotes.)

My guess: The U.S. leans hard on the Iraqi government over the next little bit and a (secret, of course) “compromise” is reached according to which Blackwater will lease the very same contractors to another outfit, or will set up a dummy company employing the same contractors. This way everyone can claim that “Blackwater” no longer has contractors in the country, when in fact it does.

UPDATE: Wrong! I’m surprised at how quickly and publicly the Iraqi government capitulated. Wow.

A question I have put several times and have not heard an answer to is this: why did not more people who felt they couldn’t support the war in Iraq also not oppose it – in view of the plain fact that opposition meant leaving Saddam’s regime in power, free to continue torturing and murdering Iraqis? OK, they judged the consequences of the war would be worse than the consequences of leaving Saddam in power. But too many of them in doing that, even without taking the side of Saddam’s regime or of the subsequent Iraqi ‘resistance’, were rather more focused and vehement in their animus against the war effort and those prosecuting it than they were in expressing solidarity with democratic forces in Iraq or expressing anything much at all about the enemies of democracy there.

I don’t see what’s wrong with the answer he supplies here himself, which, contrary to what he suggests, he must have heard all over the place, if he was listening: that we opposed the war because we thought even worse things would come of it than Saddam Hussein in power – something we were right about, as Norm now accepts. As for the rest of it, I think we’re back to the argument from silence again. But here’s how it seems to me to work: Norm can construe rhetorical emphasis in opponents of the war in ways that are deeply unflattering to them, but when fairly obvious and problematic issues of rhetorical emphasis are pointed out in his own work, it’s not supposed to be an issue worth worrying about.

Anyway, at this point we’ve whittled down the charge against the bulk of the anti-war types to the fact that we put too much emphasis on our criticisms of the war and not enough on expressing solidarity with Iraqis. Prior to the war, I think the following suffices: we had our hands full. We were trying to stop a disaster, and although it’s hardly the most pressing issue, it’s hard not to be ticked off at people who made a silly game of pretending that trying to avert this disaster meant we had some sort of defective moral sensibilities.

The more important point is that after the war, the criticisms of corruption in the so-called reconstruction were in significant part expressions of solidarity with Iraqis. Criticisms of long-term basing ambitions in Iraq were also in significant part expressions of solidarity with Iraqis. So too were criticisms of many of the other decisions, large and small, that forced Iraqis into a bitter choice between collaboration with a corrupt neo-colonialist invading force with long-term designs on the country and a wretched sectarian insurgency. And, again, Norm had very little to say about these aspects of the occupation (beyond the issue of torture), perhaps distracted by the moral idiocy of the critics of the war, which I suppose is just one more reason to think them naughty.

I’m pretty sure the occupation was doomed anyway, and that no amount of complaining from critics could have saved it. But as long as there was hope we really did need as much focussed criticism as possible of precisely those aspects of the occupation that exacerbated a bad situation. Ritualistic denunciations of the insurgency – people who were widely understood to be wicked, who weren’t listening anyway, and who weren’t accountable to voters – just weren’t a priority.

[In Fallujah] The U.S. military turned back fleeing males [who had tested negative for explosive residue on their hands (NYT 11/13/04)] into a war zone ; it used chemical weapons (phosphorus) in the fighting; it preceded the invasion with weeks of fairly indiscriminate heavy bombing in civilian areas; and so on.

Well, here we go again. Meet “Operation Arrowhead Ripper”. From today’s NYT:

By the time dawn broke on Tuesday, the insurgent sanctuary in western Baquba had been cordoned off. Then, the American forces established footholds on the periphery of the section and slowly pressed in. �Rather than let the problem export to some other place and then have to fight them again, my goal is to isolate this thing and cordon it off,� said Col. Steve Townsend, the commander of the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Second Infantry Division.
…
Unlike Falluja, where most of the population fled in advance of the battle, thousands of civilians remain in the western section of the city.

American helicopters dropped leaflets last night urging the residents to stay in their homes. The hope was to keep civilians off the streets while American forces began to close in on the insurgents. The appeal appeared to have little effect, though, as large groups of civilians mingled on the streets Tuesday and some students even sought to go to the local university.

The presence of so many civilians on an urban battlefield affords the operatives from Al Qaeda another possible means to elude their American pursuers. If the insurgents do not manage to sneak out, some may hide their weapons and try to blend with the city�s residents.

To frustrate such plans, the Americans intend to take fingerprints and other biometric data from every resident who seems to be a potential fighter after they and Iraqi forces have gained control of the western side of the city. The Americans will also test for the presence of explosive material on suspects� hands.

Officers are hoping that local residents and even former insurgents who have split with Al Qaeda may quietly help the American troops pick out insurgents. American troops have already begun to work with more than 100 Iraqis on the eastern side of the city � a group American soldiers have nicknamed the �Kit Carson scouts.� To try to prevent insurgents from escaping, American commanders are also stepping up their reconnaissance efforts.

With the little media scrutiny that the atrocious Fallujah offensive garnered, and with US generals and political elites eager to have something to hang their hat on come September, you can bet that Operation Arrowhead Ripper is not going to be a pretty sight. Still, September will be an extremely important time for anti-war arguments. Powerful arguments will be made on the basis of the indiscriminate excesses of what was “necessary” in Fallujah in 2004, and still “necessary” in Baquba in 2007. Let’s hope the reporting makes such arguments possible. We know the US Military will do their part.

Anyway, let me make a prediction about Iraq’s newly drafted oil law. The proposed law might make it through Iraq’s political process to become the law of the land, but it hardly matters: Renationalizing the Iraqi oil industry will become a test of will and credibility for Iraqi politicians for as long as it takes to renationalize the oil industry. If I was an oil exec, I would be very reluctant to bet on this law. It doesn’t have a chance.

2. While disappointed with many features of the trial, I applaud the Bush administration’s vigorous defence of the principle that heads of state are legally responsible for actions they, and their underlings, take while in power. Let’s see where that one takes us, shall we?

I watched a video of Saddam Hussein in the court. It was very nice to see him in that position, for all the flaws in the process. All the same, if you’re going to go through all of that trouble, at such cost, to bring someone to justice, you want to do it properly. Even allowing for the very difficult circumstances of the trial, I can’t help feeling that they really lost an opportunity to really show justice done in a comprehensive, honest, and open way.

Norm Geras responds to a critical post by Timothy Burke. I thought I’d say something (quick and partial) since I just recently posted something critical of Norm. When I first saw Burke’s post, I thought some of the points went a bit far; Norm points out a few of the places where it does so.

I do think, though, that someone who reads Norm carefully and over the long run, even in a generous spirit, will end up awfully puzzled about some of the silences on Norm’s blog. For example, Norm points out correctly that he has not been at all silent about the issue of torture. He’s against it, and he’s got the posts to prove it. But, as far as I can remember, he declines to follow through with an explanation of what follows from that rejection. Norm wrote in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, for example, that Rumsfeld ought to resign. He did not, and Bush did not fire him. What then? Norm does not say. In other words, Bush pushes a plate of shit our way – I include myself, because for a time I supported the occupation – and we say, “But that’s shit,” and push it back, and Bush pushes it back silently across the table. Do we eat it? Do we eat it with protest? Eat it for a limited time only? What follows from our noble position on torture? We are not told. Instead we are told – told repeatedly – that a certain segment of the left has lost its sense of perspective. But what is the proper perspective? Absent some account of what the proper perspective is, the space including the alleged hysterics remains unspecified, and so the range of those criticized potentially quite vast. I think this is what leads people to assume that Norm is conversationally implying something much worse than I think he in fact has in mind.

And what happens when Bush plunges the U.S. into a constitutional crisis by abandoning habeas corpus? And by continuing the practice of extraordinary rendition – of, remember, innocent people along with the guilty? At what point should all these things lead us to believe that the U.S. isn’t fit to wage a war with allegedly humanitarian goals? Does the abandonment of habeas corpus lead to serious legal questions about other country’s efforts alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan? It is perfectly fair to point out that some critics of Bush are hysterical, but unless repeatedly pointing this out is a prelude to some sort of account of what is a reasonable response to these horrors, people who care deeply about these matters do have a right to feel frustrated.

And there are other gaps which I believe are genuinely puzzling to someone who reads Norm in good faith and with a generous spirit. Beyond the exemplary response to Abu Ghraib, what of the character of the occupation? Norm has written a great deal about unbalanced responses to the occupation, but almost nothing about what a balanced response would look like. Again, how long and with what goals? What about the evidence that many of the worst decisions in the early days were connected with further military ambitions in the region? What about the promotion of proxies like Chalabi, with all its consequences, within Iraqi politics in the early days? It is all very well to reply that Iraq was in a bad way prior to the occupation and that if we sat around waiting for a morally pure intervener we would wait forever. But it is only the beginning of what needs to be said. How low can we go? And are the hysterics perhaps on to something? He does not say. But someone who reads Norm, and reads his criticisms of others for their silences and evasions will surely, at some point, begin to stamp his feet with impatience at the silence on these issues. Norm wrote nothing on the second seige of Fallujah, with all its horrors. And although I cannot square that with some of the harsher things he’s written about the silences of others, I do very much agree with him that ritual denunciations of every horror are unnecessary and can easily degrade into empty posturing. But what a fairminded reader of Normblog may reasonably wonder is: If the second seige of Fallujah was a horror, what then? What does it say about the occupation, its prospects, its moral legitimacy? And, again, are the hysterics on to something?

In the early months of the occupation as it became clear that the U.S. was going to be occupying Iraq with far fewer allies than many expected, Norm wrote a series of posts lamenting the shortsightedness (and worse) of the leaders who declined to assist the U.S. Eventually the posts stopped. Has Norm’s position changed? I don’t know. In the meantime, the evidence has become, I think, as solid as evidence can be that the position of those who refused to help the U.S. in Iraq was far more reasonable than Norm recognized at the time: Anyone helping with the occupation, was essentially helping an incredibly corrupt project into which they would have essentially no real input, and making themselves co-partners in a regime of massive detention, as well as torture. Does this change Norm’s retrospective view of the reasonableness of the refusal to help the project? He does not say.

At any rate, Norm is right to say that he’s engaged in the past with critics of the war, including me. And no blogger is under an obligation to give an exhaustive accounting for his or her position. But at a certain point surely more needs to be said if more continues to be said against those who reject the U.S.’s continuing position in Iraq. At least, more needs to be said if we’re to have a reasonable debate about the subject.

So anyone who follows the news in Iraq knows that that is a damn good question. Shootings by contractors (many who have been killed working under incredibly dangerous conditions) seem to be a real grievance Iraqis have with the occupation. The worries about military contractors in Iraq are also connected to the issue of the current American military transformation. The position you take on these worries – whether you think they’re tractable or not – is bound to influence your views about the prudence of some of Rumsfeld’s controversial ideas about the modernization of the American military (though, of course, the use of military contractors pre-dates Rumsfeld). Part of the transformation of the military has involved precisely this shift to an increasing reliance on military contractors to perform a wide range of duties that would formerly have been taken up by the military.

There are two ways of reading what follows the student’s question. The optimistic reading is just that Bush is incredibly comfortable lying in public, and that he was doing so on this occasion. Of course he knows that there’s a serious issue about the legal status of private military contractors, since there’s been quite a debate about this subject, and at some point Biden, or Rice or Powell before he left said something to make him aware that this was an issue. So when Bush acts surprised by the question and completely stumped by it – when he really looks as if he’s never heard anything about this issue – it’s just an act.

The pessimistic reading is that this really is the first that Bush has heard of the issue. On this more terrifying reading Bush is actually unaware of an issue that is at once a) a significant source of resentment among Iraqis, poisoning good will essential to his project even further; b) a serious moral and legal issue arising from the occupation; and c) a necessary piece of information for judging the future direction of the American military.

Bush manages to splutter something about delegation, and then moves on to the next question. I think his response nicely captures the basic problem with the “The President is a Moron but he Delegates Well” theory of Presidential Aptitude, a theory my father was always fond of applying to Reagan back in the day. On the pessimistic reading, which I lean towards, Bush is so out of touch that he is both unable to delegate properly and unable to assess the results of his delegation.

The Americans found it difficult to spot the guerrillas, though they would occasionally see a black-clad figure sprinting through a house or down a street. Some officers called in airstrikes. Others ordered Abrams tanks to blast away with their main cannons. “I got bombs; he got bombs,” Colonel Davis said. “I got more bombs than he got.”
…
Yet they also acknowledge that it is as hard as ever for the Americans to win widespread support among the people of Anbar. “It’s a very primal fight,” Colonel Davis said. “We don’t do a lot of hearts and minds out here because it’s irrelevant.”

The diplomatic work of the next few months, from the Administration’s perspective, is to simultaneously convince the Sunni and Shiite leadership that a US presence is the only thing that will protect its communities from each other. To that end, a certain �enduring base� (if you will) of distrust between the two communities is a boon to US policy. Forthcoming news may make more sense interpreted in that light.

And I think he’s quite right. Notice that this general claim comes in all kinds of flavours. You can go all-out-paranoid, as usual, but there are also subtler, and more charitable interpretations available if that’s how you prefer to interpret your clusterfucks.

Here’s what I mean. You don’t have to think that anyone in particular in the Bush administration is sitting around, rubbing his hands together, and cackling about his evil plan to foment a civil war in Iraq. You just need to notice that to intervene effectively in a dispute like the emerging Sunni-Shiite dispute (and don’t forget the Kurds!) in Iraq takes an extraordinary amount of energy, determination and single-mindedness. That’s very hard to muster in a complex institutional setting, since complex institutional settings are typically characterized by drift and inertia. The U.S. has a bunch of priorities and goals in Iraq, among which are goals which are better served if the U.S. can, as Henley points out, act as a sort of long-term stabilizer. Mix together these various goals – some laudable, some not – throw in a bit of incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance, and – voila! – it’s not terribly likely that the U.S. will do whatever it takes to avert a large-scale civil war in the next few years. So no one needs to be rubbing their hands together and planning anything. All you need to get an even larger disaster is the fact that, since it does serve some U.S. goals if it gets to play the role of Indispensable Preventer of Civil Conflict For Ever and Ever Amen, that it’s unlikely the U.S. government is ever going to focus on the goal of really fixing things with the sort of seriousness required to fix anything.

Aw hell, I feel like I’m not being terribly clear here – that I’m not really saying what I’m trying to say. Must be out of practice. But I’ll hit “publish” anyway. Bash away in the comments.