WE STILL DONT GET IT!

Looking back for a moment, our mistake going into Viet Nam was due to two major misconceptions:
1) We thought communism was monolithic, and a communist V. N. would be an extension of communist China, hence the erroneous "domino theory." It was based on ignorance of the 2,000 year history of V. N. resistance to Chinese efforts to dominate and control them. Viet Nam is closer to us today than they are to China.
2) We misjudged the Vietnamese people, their nationalism and determination, and the value
in guerrilla warfare of our technological superiority.

We made two similar mistakes going into Iraq:
1) As in V. N., we misjudged the Iraqi willingness and determination to fight occupation with unrelenting fury and ingenuity. They too are not as impressed with our technological superiority as we are.
2) We were totally misinformed on the significance and implications of the Shia/Sunni split. We were unprepared for the way that split could and would be exploited to incite civil war.

That second point requires further explanation, because we still don't get it. In a previous blog I referred to Vali Nasr, an Iranian (Shiite) American who speaks all of the Middle Eastern languages, and visits there regularly. He has written a dynamite book, The Shia Revival, which
explains better than anything I have found, the history and decisive significance not only for Iraq, but for the whole Middle East, of the resurgence of the Shiias. All quotations here will be from that source.

We are still arming and training an essentially Shia army and police in Iraq. (Very few Sunnis enlist, and they are harassed and hounded by both sides when they do.) This Shia army, when
battle-ready, will be under Shia (religious) leadership, not a "national unity government" which
doesn't (and won't) exist. These are the facts of life that we are presently in denial on.

To explain why a unified government is unlikely, if not impossible, let's take an analogy from our own post-civil war experience. When the feds forced Southern whites (SW) to allow former slaves to vote and hold public office, SWs rebelled, refusing to have blacks hold positions of authority over them. The whole rationale for slavery had been not only that blacks were grossly inferior, but were actually sub-human! Many Sunni Arabs regard Shia in a similar light. They will willingly die before they let Shia rule them.

In Lebanon popular lore has it that Shias have tales (like monkeys), breed like rabbits, and are loud and repulsive in expressing their religious zeal. They are regarded as low-class, tasteless, and vulgar in all their ways. In Saudi Arabia it is said that Shia spit in the food. (This is to discourage social interaction, like eating together.) Of all the Sunnis, the Arab Sunnis are the most discriminatory and contemptous toward the Shia,

This enmity goes back a ways: The great caliph Mansour (d. 762) had to suspend the contstruction of Baghdad twice in order to put down Shia revolts. The Abbasids (750-1258) who ruled the Arab world from Baghdad, imprisoned and killed Shia religious leaders as a regular activity to keep down or avoid revolts. Saddam followed that policy for the same reason, to control a Shia majority hostile to him.

In 1802 Wahhabi armies (Sunni) invaded Karbala (in Iraq) and desecrated the Shrine of Imam
Husayn (the grandson of Muhammed), an event that has left an indelible mark on Shia historical memory. In 1926 as the present S. Arabia was being formed by uniting various tribes under Wahhabism, large numbers of Shia were killed, the rest marginalized, stripped of any public roles, and tolerated but not accepted. They were the undesirable and heathen minority (to the
Wahhabis).

In modern times, "These nations (Iraq, Pakistan, S. Arabia, Lebanon) solidified Sunni rule and Shia marginality and, worse yet, gave impetus to sectarianism. The founding ideas of these nations, despite a certain surface rhetoric of inclusiveness, never truly encompassed the Shia. Nor did they make provisions to include the economically disadvantaged classes, who often were predominantly Shia (as in Iraq and Lebanon). Marginality continued to dog the Shia as they faced institutionalized discrimination, persecution, and vicious prejudice in their every day lives." See the similarity with blacks in the U. S.?

"The most important outcome of war in Iraq has been that one of the three most important Arab-majority countries officially became the first state in history in the Arab world to be ruled by a democratically empowered Shia majority. . . Although ruling regimes in Riyadh, Amman, and Kuwait stand opposed to Sunni extremism and support the U. S. led war on terror, their interests in Iraq are aligned with the insurgency and its goals of wrecking a new, Shia-led Iraqi state." (p. 242, V. Nasr, op. cit.) And that, sports fans, is why a workable unifed government is
unlikely. But we still haven't gotten it!

Respond if you must, to jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

SCRAMBLING DECK CHAIRS ON THE TITANIC

We're "making adjustments" in Iraq. We're "looking at different tactics." As the search for an exit strategy picks up steam, the shop-worn pledge to "stay the course" becomes non-operative.
Only the slowest and dimmest candidates still use it. But it served brilliantly in the general election two years ago. What has changed? Nothing, on the ground there. Whatever is wrong with the course now was wrong then.

No "sovereignty" was transferred, because none ever existed, after Saddam. Sovereignty means control. We never had it to give, because we never bothered to secure it. Now that's no longer possible (if it ever was). So we must find a decent way to excuse ourselves and get the hell out. As Fareed Zakaria (my fave commentator on Iraq) wrote in the Oct. 16 Newsweek:
"More waiting is unlikely to turn things around. . . There is really no functioning government south of Kurdistan, only power vacuums that have been filled by factions, militias and strongmen. It is time to call an end to the tests, the six-month trials, the waiting and watching, and to recognize that the Iraqi government has failed. It is also time to face the terrible reality that America's mission in Iraq has substantially failed."

How do we ask people to keep on dying for a mistake? What has changed is our public awareness. You can't fool all the people all the time. A dozen or so good books have come out listing the lunacies that led to this fiasco. Together they spell out how and why the project was always and originally DOA. This isn't hindsight. Some of us said this at the time.

From the "fixed" intelligence to the fixed (emasculated) Congress, to the silenced generals to the hoodwinked public, this reckless gamble went forward in the dark. For such a travesty our "free press" must carry a major share of responsibility. Failing to find and expose the facts in time prevented us from stopping the folly before it could cost 3,000 Americans (counting civilians) and 300,000 (or more) Iraqi dead. Stay the course indeed!

Bill O'Reilly wrote recently that no one could have forseen the insurgency in Iraq or the sectarian strife. Condi Rice and others have echoed that nonsense. The truth is that King Abdullah of Jordan, Pres. Mubarak of Egypt, and our own generals Scowcroft, Odom, and Zinni, among many others, all warned us well ahead of the war of exactly what has now happened. They were ignored or scoffed at. I guess we'll keep moving the deck furniture around a little longer.

Respond if you wish: jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?

Rosa Brooks (in the L. A. Times) has pointed out that congress' failure to protect children goes way beyond children employed within its halls. "From 2000 to 2005, the number of American children living in poverty went up by 1.3 million, and the liklihood that any given child is poor increased by 9%." That's progress? So much for "welfare reform." Weren't kids the whole point of welfare?

This is going on while liberals like Bill Clinton are bragging about clearing the welfare rolls. But how has that reform impacted these women's children? After all, 67.7% of the recipients of welfare were kids! Are the kids doing better in school now? Are fewer dropping out, or more? How is it reform if the main recipients are worse off?

It's true that welfare rolls have been reduced by more than 50%. But less than half of the women off of welfare have full time employment. And at minimum wage ($5.15) a full time worker remains well below the poverty line. In 2005 seven out of ten poor children had at least one working parent -- and the number of Americans living in what the government defines as "extreme poverty" went up by 3.5 million from 2000 to 2005.

Brooks again: "The statistics are dry, but what they mean, in real life, is babies who die because their mothers lacked prenatal care, children who suffer from preventable diseases, children who have no homes and instead move from shelter to shelter, and children whose lives are blighted by uncertainty, instability, and fear."

When moms are working two and sometimes three jobs to keep the lights and heat on, who is minding the kids? Who suprevises their homework and makes sure it's
done? Is mom too tired and stressed when she finally gets home? Are the kids falling behind in school work, and finally falling out of school altogether? What happens then? They can't work, often times, because they are competing with their moms for entry level jobs. Teen unemployment runs 50% - 60% in New York City, and most big cities. Do those unemployed, unsupervised kids wind up in trouble? In prison? Pregnant? Is there a connection between welfare reduction and prison expansion? We have over 2 million people in prison now. Are we penny wise and pound foolish?

Granted, the old welfare system was a mess, and needed overhauling. I'm very familiar with it. I was a caseworker for NYC welfare (in the South Bronx) in the sixties. I watched single moms struggle valiantly to keep their homes and kids clean, and the kids doing well in school. I had admiration for those women, and would give most of them high marks for the jobs they did as homemakers and mothers. The system had problems that needed fixing. My concern is that we've thrown out the babies with the bath!

What do you think? jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

ON UNDERSTANDING

"It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what's wrong with these people." -- Sen. Trent Lott (R), of Miss. (emphasis mine). He was talking about Arabs and Muslims. Yes, it is hard, especially if we don't know much about them. (Like our policies make sense to them.)

If we want to understand the Iraqis for instance, a good place to start is by looking up Lawrence of Arabia on your Wikipedia (try it, you'll like it!) Lawrence led the Arab insurgency against the Ottomans during WW I. He promised them that if they helped the Brits, Great Britain, on its word of honor, would guarantee them political freedom and self-dertermination after the war. Instead, the Brits occupied Iraq, and attempted to rule there. They ran into the same problems we have now, and finally gave up, after losing a lot of people, and killing a lot of Iraqis. As they left, they put the better educated Sunni minority in charge of the majority Shia. After a similar failure, as I have said before, we will be leaving the Shia in charge this time.

If we want to understand Muslim cultures, we have to study their religion (along with other cultural features). The best book I've found on the struggle between Shia and Sunnis is the one I've already mentioned in a previous blog: The Shia Revival, by Vali Nasr. It is written clearly, for lay people, and is not technical or complicated. It is expository non-fiction.

Another way to access Muslim culture is by reading the works of their best writers of fiction. Orhan Pamuk is generally recognized in the West as the leading Turkish writer. His recent novel, Snow, is set in eastern Turkey, and depicts, among other things, terrorism by Kurds in that area, and the terribly depressing custom of marrying off idealistic girls in their mid-teens to fat, smelly 50 and 60 year-olds. The girls frequently commit suicide, either before or shortly after, the wedding. It's an
evil system.

Senator Lott should be able to understand an evil system. He grew up in the aftermath of slavery, Jim Crow, the Klan, the Southern Baptists, and s0me 8,000+
lynchings in his region between 1865 and 1965. At a celebration for Strom Thurmond, he longed nostalgically for "the good ole' days" of segregation. Can we
understand what's wrong with those people?

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net