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The
death
of Saddam's two sons was the occasion for a well-organized
Team Bush assault on the President's most potentially dangerous
– and unforgiving – enemy: the American public. The Washington
Post reports:
"The
Bush administration made a coordinated effort yesterday to
rebuild fading public support for its Iraq policy, using Tuesday's
killing of Saddam Hussein's sons as a platform to highlight
the successes of the U.S. occupation."
Gunning down
the ex-dictator's 14-year-old grandson might be considered
a success – if you're Attila the Hun. Washington
finally decided to issue full-color photos
of Saddam's fallen spawn, bloodied and leaking gore, instead
of sticking their heads on pikes in Baghdad's central square.
I'm waiting for Rummy to show up at his next news conference
clad in animal skins, wielding Uday's thighbone.
Cut
to Bush in the Rose Garden, looking "clearly pleased," according
to the Post, and equally clueless:
"Yesterday,
in the city of Mosul, the careers of two of the regime's chief
henchmen came to an end…. Now more than ever, all Iraqis can
know that the former regime is gone and will not be coming
back."
As
if in answer, a few hours later, in the city of Mosul, the
careers of three American soldiers came to an end – ambushed
by Iraqi guerrillas.
An
eye for an eye, an ambush for an ambush. Are we winning, yet?
Gee, I thought we had already
won.
One
almost feels sorry for the Bushies as they scamper frantically
about trying to patch up the huge holes in their case for
war and occupation, like ants caught up in a hurricane. Their
pathetic efforts are so fruitless, their shifting
stories and threadbare rationales so unconvincing, that
it's impossible for any patriotic American not to feel a twinge
of embarrassment, no matter what your party or your views
on the war. Are these fools really my government?
The
administration has been characterizing the growing resistance
as the "remnants" of Saddam's supporters, Ba'athists
and other "loyalists,"
also known as "die-hards," but this fiction is bound to dissipate,
to begin with, as soon as Saddam Hussein meets his sons on
one of hell's lower rungs. Short of that, however, the "neo-Ba'athist"
construct proffered by the Pentagon is bound to fall apart
due to the public pronouncements of the guerrillas. If the
news media can get American troops to go on camera and voice
doubts about their mission, then surely they can get the Iraqi
resistance fighters to talk, just like CBS
did the other night:
"Three
men who claim to have participated in several recent and deadly
attacks on U.S. soldiers say they're not doing it for love
of Saddam – but instead for God and their country. U.S. officials
blame 'remnants of Saddam's regime' – 'dead enders' they call
them – for the unending attacks.
"'Are
any of you former Saddam loyalists? Work for Saddam? Love
Saddam?' asked CBS News Correspondent David Hawkins. The men
all shook their heads 'no' as a translator said, They just
follow the instruction of Holy Koran.' ….
"'Why
do you fight? Why do you attack American soldiers?' Hawkins
asked.
"'This
is occupation, so we fight against the occupation,' said a
fighter.
"'You're
very upset the Americans are here,' asked Hawkins, 'but are
you glad Saddam is gone?'
"'We
feel happy now because we can speak freely, but at the same
time we don't want Saddam neither, or America. We just want
the American soldiers to leave our country.'"
Does
anybody besides myself remember the movie Red Dawn?
It's a cold war morality play in which America is invaded,
conquered and occupied by the Soviets: the story revolves
around the exploits of an underground resistance, consisting
mostly of teen-agers, that springs up to combat the Red Army
and its collaborators. The resistance starts out small, with
minor acts of sabotage, and escalates over time into a well-coordinated
and virtually unstoppable general rebellion that ends in the
defeat of the occupiers. Our government's rhetoric – referring
to the military subjugation of Iraq as a "liberation" – is
an echo of Red Dawn, where the commissars, Soviet and
home-grown, also called their invasion a "liberation."
In
Red Dawn, the Red Army generals appoint local Commies
as their Quislings. In Iraq, U.S. viceroy Paul
Bremer is promoting Communists to the decorative "Governing
Council," made up of Iraqis
willing along to go along with the terms of the occupation.
Agence France Presse reports:
"Among
the more surprising choices made by the top US overseer in
Iraq, Paul Bremer, known for his neo-conservative leanings,
was to allow communist Hamid
Majid Mussa to sit on Iraq's new Governing Council."
Not
really all that surprising, though, when you consider that
a
great many neocons are ex-Communists of one sort or another.
It's a toss-up as to which side of the political spectrum
is apt to be most embarrassed by this weird ideological convergence.
A top U.S. official explained the logic of Bremer's decision:
"'He
has two main concerns: preventing extremists taking the key
positions among the Shiites and keeping the economy going,'
explained one of the international advisors involved in the
selection process. 'He hesitated at first but became convinced
that the communists could prove a counterweight to the imams,'
he added, asking not to be named."
The
Iraqi Communist Party,
for its part, explains the alliance in similarly hard-headed
practical terms: the appointment, according to them, was simply
a recognition of the Communists' popular support. But there
is more to this bizarre Popular Front than
just pragmatism: there is a certain ideological affinity at
work here.
The
Communists, like the Americans, believe that the way to transform
society and achieve the transition to true democracy is by
establishing an "interim" dictatorship: in the case of the
former, it's the "dictatorship
of the proletariat," while the Americans call their dictatorship
the "Iraqi
Interim Authority." But that's just semantics. Both want
to forcibly modernize and secularize a deeply religious, consciously
conservative society, and seek to "liberate" women: both commies
and neocons see themselves as "progressive," on the right
side of history, and both have force at the core of
their methods.
There
is really nothing all that odd about the Commie-neocon axis
of "liberation": it represents the reunion of the Bolsheviks with their long-lost
Menshevik brothers.
The
predicament we now find ourselves in was aptly summed up by
Murray N. Rothbard, the late libertarian
theorist, in his 1992 speech to the
John Randolph Club:
"When
I was growing up, I found that the main argument against laissez-faire,
and for socialism, was that socialism and communism were inevitable:
'You can't turn back the clock!' they chanted, ‘you can't
turn back the clock.’ But the clock of the once-mighty Soviet
Union, the clock of Marxism-Leninism, a creed that once mastered
half the world, is not only turned back, but lies dead and
broken forever. But we must not rest content with this victory.
For though Marxism-Bolshevism is gone forever, there still
remains, plaguing us everywhere, its evil cousin: call it
‘soft Marxism,’ ‘Marxism-Humanism,’ ‘Marxism-Bernsteinism,’
‘Marxism-Trotskyism,’ ‘Marxism-Freudianism,’ well, let's just
call it ‘Menshevism,’ or ‘social democracy.’
"Social
democracy is still here in all its variants, defining our
entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology
and feminism on the left over to neoconservatism on the right.
We are now trapped, in America, inside a Menshevik fantasy,
with the narrow bounds of respectable debate set for us by
various brands of Marxists. It is now our task, the task of
the resurgent right, of the paleo movement, to break those
bonds, to finish the job, to finish off Marxism forever."
–
Justin Raimondo
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