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ranger: sorry for one point, on which i must have been unclear--i shifted from your post to powerclowns in the middle of my response--not all of it was directed at your post.
for wht its worth, i have never made much of a point about equating iraq and vietnam--i have argued that there are parallels between iraq and the algerian war--many many parallels.
more generally, analogies should illuminate, not obscure. reference to world war 2 is one made to legitimate the undertaking in iraq, to refer it to what studs terkel called the last good war. the analogy is more wishful thinking, more propaganda, than it is anything else.
second problem: the war in iraq is not over. referring what is going on now to the postwar reconstruction of europe is faulty on those grounds as well.
on another point, i do not think history is some guy who dispenses judgement: history is made by the folk who write it. you will not escape political assessments of the bush project by looking to history. i think for a long long time you will have debate over the legality of the war in the first place, the problems of trying to impose pseudo-democracy in the american style at the end of a gun barrel, debates about other ways to pushing for more democratic types of self-governance, etc. these will continue, they will not go away. george w bush will not make out well in history.
the question of elections at the end of the month is complex--it is generally agreed outside of the us that already they are a process without content. the sunni community is boycotting them. something on the order of 30 political organizations within iraq have petitioned that they be postponed. there is division within the allawi regime on the question of whether they will happen. it is not obvious that the fact of an election indicates a functioning democracy. i know that the administration would prefer to pretend otherwise---they are desperate for something to legitimate the folly of the war in iraq--everything else has failed---it would be yet another blow to its public image were the elections to be postponed.
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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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