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i do not see how heading in this direction will help anything---on the other hand, it would seem to me that if the guardian's assessment of what is starting to happen in iraq is correct, and if the americans find themselves as a faction rather than as an overarching ordering force--which appears to be a real possibility--then i would expect that the incoherence of american occupation will increase.
that general incoherence will in all probability decrease the ability of combattants to be sure who they are fighting, and with that will increase the occaision for "accidents" or "collateral damage"--seen in this way, you can avoid the snippy "my friends are nice people and they are in iraq and so this cant be intentional so fuck you" kind of argument and their counter.
if good people, nice people, on all sides, find themselves in an increasing chaotic situation, the blame for that has to rest with the administration that put them in this situation. if that chaos is such that good, nice people become capable of committing atrocities in specific situations, triggered by specific events, out of fear or out of not being able to determine who was who, then, again, blame has to rest on the administration that put them there.
over and over on this and other boards i see the same kind of argument deployed: my firends are good people, they are in iraq therefore anything you say about atrocities (from the american side, in this case, in particular--but they have no monopoly) is a priori offensive as a way of trying to short circuit political argument about the nature of the war in iraq.
if that is what is going on, then i would caution the folk who go this way to think about why they make this kind of argument.
there is a real danger that they are instrumentalizing the associations with their friends/relatives, and by doing that are not developing the arguments they imagine they are, but are instead trying to shut down debate.
if you cant win the debate, you can at least get the thread closed.
there is the gap that seperates emotion felt personally from emotion as written in a public space--there is a switch in meaning and function. you cant stop that switch from occurring, so you can at least keep it in mind.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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