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cyrnel: i found the point when the slippage started in the thread---thanks.
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i asked about the relation between the justifications for the war at all (which i found totally unconvincing, which i still find totally unconvincing) and the question of whether the present situation is heading toward a civil war because i found the correlation little more than an attempt--backhanded or not (and i think it is, reading back through ace's various posts) to evacuate the question of what is happening and reduce all interpretation to a question of your a priori position on the war as a whole.
i think that you can see something of this in the logic of ace's posts: a wholesale avoidance of particular analysis--not to mention critique--of the specific actions of this administration---instead you get a superficial assessment that tracks the movement of ace's personal attitude toward the war as a whole--moving from support (grounded in arguments that for me have no currency) to advocating withdrawal--an advocacy couched in terms of a series of vague statements about the iraqis "stepping up" or some such emeril-like vagueness (at least when emeril says something like this, you can see what they actually men: he is throwing in more garlic).
i see the possibility of civil war in iraq as catastrophic.
it is a clear index of the wholesale incompetence of this administration--the situation i think plausible has already been outlined above---the conclusion to be drawn from it seems to me unavoidable--this invasion, illegitimate from the outset no matter what your feelings about saddam hussein might be (this has been done enough here--i am not entering any further into it) was undertaken with no coherent long-term plan. it appears to have been undertaken without any particular understanding of iraq either--the admission in the post article i cited on the first page of this thread that american commanders are only now figuring out that they are "operating in a context" seems to me almost unbelievable---it is---and i am not joking about this---one of the stupidest statements that i have ever read, from anyone.
thanks to the post-thatecherite practice of reactionary governments trying to head off dissent triggered by illegitimate, illegal military adventures by choking off as much coherent information about what is actually happening as possible (part of the right's conception of a coherent campaign for "hearts and minds"--which, judging from this, amounts to lie early and often)---it is difficult to work out the process whereby the americans found themselves played by all sides. a general outline is evident enough, however: various iraqi groups seem to have used the imperial arrogance of the military to their advantage to trigger a process that now finds the americans reduced to one faction amongst a number, with no meaningful claim to have stabilized anything militarily.
the americans were so committed to the superficial aspects of pseudo-democratization that they were willing to push forward elections that the sunni community in iraq was boycotting and so to create a provisional (puppet) government that had and has no hope of being able to make credible claims that it represents anything like a consensus or national interest that supercedes those of particular groups.
tracking a parallel sorry trajectory, the question of the size and readiness of the american proxy "iraqi security force" ended up sounding like some bizarre rerun of the story of the arvn in south vietnam....it quickly went from numerous and powerful and forward looking to small and ill-trained and incapable of coherent action.
so i can see why supporters of this administration would have every interest in trying to generate a style of argument that would make it difficult to look at the situation that actually seems to obtain on the ground and replace it with a priori style claims--if you see this situation as potentially the start of a civil war, it must be because you opposed the war. if you supported the war, then it is simply time for the iraqis to "step up" or whatever--at no point in this kind of argument would there be any trace of assessment of the seemingly overwhelming ineptness of this administration.
again, i do think that this was introduced into the thread in a backhanded manner across the series of ace's posts--i doubt that he meant it--but nonetheless it appears to be functioning here. it would be nice to see it stop.
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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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