|
| Wednesday, June 4, 2003 |
 |
Truthwash 
| | [Note: The Guardian has since withdrawn the George Wright story below. More here and here. I'm leaving it up in its original state so when folks follow links here wondering what the fracas was about, there will be some framing context. — DS, 6/5/03] |
| | Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil. |
| | Christ, I almost have to respect Wolfowitz, despite all his evil, he at least shoots straighter then the rest of the Washington chickenhawk terror squad. The lies are coming out in the open. The question is, does anyone really care? My gut is that they do care, but not on a scandal level. Come next years elections though, Bush is going to be in trouble convincing people to trust him. He better pray for economic recovery fast... |
| | Daniel Drezner calls Wright's piece a galactically stupid distortion. [Later... Howard agrees, pointing to the source Q&A.] I heard Wolfowitz interviewed on the radio before the war, however, and the gist of what he said (as I recall) was: We need to hit Iraq because (a) they matter (while countries with less-enriched geologies don't), and (b) because we can. This is also pretty much what Thomas Friedman wrote in Because We Could, his NY Times column this morning (hope that link stays live): |
| | The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.'s) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it's the wrong issue now. |
| | Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason. |
| | The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there — a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die. |
| | The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government — and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen — got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about. |
| | The "right reason, he said, " was to "partner with Iraqis, post-Saddam, to build a progressive regime." And the "moral reason" was "that Saddam's regime was an engine of mass destruction and genocide that had killed thousands of his own people, and neighbors, and needed to be stopped." |
| | The "stated reason," he said, was Saddam's lingering weapons of mass destruction. I believe that was a red herring from the start. |
| | It seemed obvious to me that the WMDs were gone before the inspectors arrived because getting rid of them was the only way Saddam Hussein could stay in power. It was his last chess move — a way to say in check and avoid checkmate. He didn't realize that the U.S. would lie to itself, blow off the inspectors' findings, and attack without U.N. support. |
| | Anyway, once again, Tom Friedman serves as the unofficial Minister of Lucidity for the Bush administration. |
| | What blows me away about this is the simplistic mentality behind the whole war effort, and the belief that the ends justify the means — even as the means amount to Operation Piss Off the Planet. (Aside: I love The Onion, but their search and archiving system makes it nearly impossible to find and point back to some of their best stuff, which is a damn shame.) |
| | Check here, here and here. I could list more, but you get the drift. It's old-fashioned imperialism. I know that sounds like tired old lefty finger-wagging, but check out the definition. It fits. We're the overdog now, without any apparent sense of the unintended but predictable consequences. |
| | By the way, the "real reason" for the war was stated, often, by plenty of warbloggers. Read Nick Denton last August. He nailed it: |
| | The US needs to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime because he's a bad man, sure, because he may conceivably be connected with Al-Qaeda, because he's developing weapons of mass destruction, because a friendly Iraq would alter the balance of power in the Middle East, sure, because of all of that. But the US needs to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime mainly because the West needs to humiliate the Arab world, and dispel the Islamic millennial fantasy. |
| | That was, pretty much, the plan. |
| | And it's a long way from playing out. I hope, for everybody's sake, that terrorism really was a bubble, and that Tom Friedman's right about the "right" as well as the "moral" reasons (the latter of which was never in dispute) for the war. |
| | Meanwhile, it's gradually becoming apparent that (a) The administration lied to itself and the rest of us about Iraq's WMDs; and (b) Our Intelligence System remains a literally unbelievable mess. |
| | No doubt our intel is right about some things, even many things (we'll never know, secrets being so critical to the whole business); but it's been spectacularly wrong about at least two big things (failing to prevent 9/11 and providing an erroneous pretext for a war). The result is approximately zero credibility. |
| | Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of Saddam's genocidal evil, my view was that Mr. Bush did not need to find any W.M.D.'s to justify the war for me. I still feel that way. But I have to admit that I've always been fighting my own war in Iraq. Mr. Bush took the country into his war. And if it turns out that he fabricated the evidence for his war (which I wouldn't conclude yet), that would badly damage America and be a very serious matter. |
| | But my ultimate point is this: Finding Iraq's W.M.D.'s is necessary to preserve the credibility of the Bush team, the neocons, Tony Blair and the C.I.A. But rebuilding Iraq is necessary to win the war. I won't feel one whit more secure if we find Saddam's W.M.D.'s, because I never felt he would use them on us. But I will feel terribly insecure if we fail to put Iraq onto a progressive path. Because if that doesn't happen, the terrorism bubble will reinflate and bad things will follow. Mr. Bush's credibility rides on finding W.M.D.'s, but America's future, and the future of the Mideast, rides on our building a different Iraq. We must not forget that. |
| | Sure. We also need to go three "Buts" back and pull the subject of lying away from the subject of Iraq. Hard as it is, we need to de-conflate the two issues. |
| | Did the Bush Administration fabricate evidence to justify this war? If they did, and if the President was part of it, the offense is far more impeachable than Bill Clinton's lying about getting a blowjob. |
| | If they didn't, and their intelligence sources were just plain wrong, then the heads that produced the bad intel need to roll. |
Soundtreck
| | Just got turned on to KEXP, which has an excellent webcast. Listening in 96Kbps MP3. (Unfortunately, their in-studio recordings are all in Real and Windows Media. I understand why, but still.) |
| | They've got a pledge drive going, but, as with so many public stations, there's no way to pay on line. (That I can find, anyway.) My theory is that public stations are so locked into the pro formalities of pledge drives that it doesn't occur to them that it's a good idea to make listener contributions easy on a full-time basis. |
Blogging for fitness
| | I'm looking for recommendations of a good doctor or group in San Francisco that can become my new GP. This is where the social software idea hit me - I'd love to go to a place like LinkedIn and make a non-work-related request - like finding a good doctor or dentist - and get back responses from my friends or my friends' friends. |
Dean's dare
| | Oddly, it comes up blank for me. |
| | Maybe the pointer should be going here. |
| | And thanks to Lance for the first pointer. |
OffSpring
| | Too late. I already bought a Clié. That was after owning a Palm Pilot and a Handspring Visor. The Clié is the first of the three that doesn't suck. |
| | The Palm Pilot was nearly unreadable, and just as nearly sync-proof. Okay, it broke new gound, etc. But it wasn't useful at night or in dark rooms. |
| | The Handspring had a variety of mechanical failures — an achievement for something with only a half-dozen moving parts. When portions of the screen failed to know they were being written upon, it was time for a replacement. |
| | The Clié is a near-perfect size, a joy to use, and extremely readable. It seems to do everything better than any of the Palms or Handsprings I've owned or played with. Sync-ing is easy. Only two complaints. One is the almost impossibly complex and non-intuitive way it imports and exports graphics files. It should simply see those files when a Memory Stick is inserted. The other is its tiny easy-to-lose external adapter for both USB and the battery charger (which, like almost all battery chargers, is too damn big). I leave it connected to the charger, and that's kept it unlost, so far. |
| | Anyway, I wish them well. Both companies are pioneers. I hope they get to become long-term settlers. |
Business mean blogs
| | I arrive early. On Saturday. Unfortunately, my next big deadline is Monday. Which means I'll be working much of the weekend. |
| | Oh, and if you have some good questions for the panelists, lemme have 'em. |
Hearing Voices
| | Jonathan: Translating from theoryspeak to geekspeak. Now that I think of it, the most powerful thing about blogging may be that it pushes use towards a more conversational form and get us away from the sort of jargon-filled speech we all use professionally. |
| | "He's a lot like us but he's not us," Maass said in an interview. "Salam sees what's happening around him ‹ the tragedy or the absurdity and he communicates it in a human voice that most journalists don't have." |
| | Salam's column, like his blog, is the most encouraging sound to come out of the war: a voice so human it makes propaganda into a joke. A sample: |
| | "Vacancies: President needed - fluent in English, will have limited powers only. Generous bonuses." This appeared on the first page of the Ahrar newspaper. Another new weekly. Newspapers are coming out of our ears these days. There are two questions which no one can answer: how many political parties are there now in Iraq? And how many newspapers are printed weekly?" Most of these papers are just two or four pages of party propaganda, no license or hassle. Just go print. I am thinking of getting my own: "Pax News - all the rumours, all the time". |
| | On the first page of the Ahrar paper you will also see a picture and a column by the founder and chief editor. When the newspaper guy noticed how I was staring at the picture he said: "Yes, it is the guy who sells Znood-al-sit [a popular Iraqi sweet]". From pastry to news, wars do strange things to people.... |
| | Although the ministry of information has been broken up and around 2,000 employees given the boot, the media industry, if you can call it that, is doing very well. Beside all the papers we now have a TV channel and radio; they are part of what our American minders have called the Iraqi media network. My favourite TV show on it is an old Japanese cartoon (here it is called Adnan wa Lina). It is about what happens after a third world war when chaos reigns the earth. Bad choice for kids' programming if you ask me. Some cities have their own local stations and there are two Kurdish TV channels. But the BBC World Service killed in one move a favourite Iraqi pastime: searching for perfect reception. The BBC Arabic service started broadcasting on FM here and it is just not the same when you don't hear the static. |
| | A powerful global conversation begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter — and getting smarter faster than most companies. |
| | These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked. |
| | Four years later, I see Salam Pax as the living opposite of the Dutch kid with his finger in the dike. |
| | A voice inside me says At last... |
Multiblogging
discuss
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
