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martinguerre,
I'm not sure how you lost your solid footing in discussing the construction of the Iraq state by foreign governments. But it's interesting that ijn your conversation with aceventura he was able to completely obliterate that crtiical point.
I find it interesting because he uses the "fact" that Saddam "gassed his own people" as if to create a higher level of moral indignation against a dictator killing people within the boundaries of his state. As if we should be more angry at someone killing "his own" than those not his own. But the simple fact remains that Saddam in no way thought of the Kurds as "his own." and they weren't
and his refusal to agree to this point, ignore it, misunderstand it, whathaveyou, leads him to think that a people ought to unite against the dictator for committing such a heinous act. but he doesn't seem to catch the notion that a people, comprised of various ethnic groups and in no way seeing themselves as ethnically united, would ever conceive or even desire to "unite" to overthrow such a dictator.
for to many, he (saddam) did no such wrong. and to others, he was representative of their wishes, but all of this within the context of foreign powers enabling him to exert control over the entire region held together by nothing other than brute (military) force--not some notion of nationhood. it simply doesn't make any sense to wonder whether the nation is fracturing into groups and bubbling into civil war, well primarily because of your first comment that there is no glue there. it's more profitable to wonder when iraq was not currently or under threat of civil war...
I just think you shouldn't have let that comment slide away so easily, becuase it manages a tremendous amount of explanation for what we are trying to decipher today; indeed, much of what many of us opposed to the invasion repeatedly pointed out as a must think about reality before action. and it's so obvious that there is just no way in any universe that intelligent masterminds of the sorts who articulated and maneuvered us into this predicament couldn't have foreseen it. especially given that a fair number of them were involved in the initial thick of it when many of us were still in baby jumpers.
but now it appears extremely rational to lean on the point that we have personal responsibility to the iraqis (as if there were a homogenous group in existence for us to cater to or ponder about), to a concept of liberty, to a way of life, to do anyting BUT up and leave, because we have been skillfully managed into a box. and this is what many of us meant when we labeled it a quagmire. much of the same as vietnam. but not in the way that many people probably conceive of either of these conflicts, because they seem them as such--conflicts. so quagmire to them means that the interactants can't move, can't escape, can't overcome. which is ludicrous to such a person, because they understand our military might to be so overwhelming that the prospect of its immobilty is laughable on its face. but I wonder if those people pop the political implications of the term quagmire into their equation. because then it becomes much more clear how someone might conceive of these "conflicts" as mainly political and resulting in quagmire. that is, all action can be framed as untenable. regardless of what is, how things exist are less relevent than how things can be made to appear. so now we sit on the brink of an episode and our political leaders call out to us that to leave is untenable, unthinkable, abrasive to our very fiber.
because if one thing resonates in this nation, it's the legal fiction of personal responsibilty. and this fiction may account for all sorts of deeds that ultimately run counter to our personal best interests, but dammit, it's responsibility. core to our legal system, central to our political consciousness, and paramount to the maintenance of capitalism. but I always saw this action as the maintenance of capitalism and so invite a number of people to make the requisite rendering of my musings into a facile argument that we trade blood for oil, so be it. but nonetheless, people in greater and higher positions in life, doing these kinds of analyses far longer than I may ever have the chance to do, and some in non-trivial high-level government positions, have already claimed that our 4th world war would be the front between global capitalism and non.
but yeah, I think you could dig your feet in a bit further on that point about the construction of an "iraqi state" by foreign powers and ride it for a bit more currency rather than get bogged down in some bizarre rationalizations that can only occur once that point is quietly swept under the proverbial rug.
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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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