Why We're Angry


In Afghanistan, Al Qaeda was a collection of martyrs, and not really decisive at all in the battle against the Soviets. They were more of a confusion, rushing in screaming, "Take me, Lord, take me now," and generally acting like a bunch of fundamentalist snake handlers. Bush and Company has elevated them to mythological status by giving them a starring role in Iraq.

Al Qaeda had nothing to offer to anybody except revenge. They don't have any infrastructure; they don't offer medical care, education, a transportation system, nothing. They are a lot like our administration in that sense. Do it yourself, we're putting all our resources into revenge killing. So without offering anything of substance, all they can offer is what has no substance, but lots of killing, i.e., a faith-based administration.

The population of the Middle East is largely uneducated. If they were educated people they wouldn't trade in magic, whether or not somebody calls it God. But because they are susceptible to superstition and magic, many of them believed the propaganda of Al Qaeda, such as the stories about the fighters who woke up with bullet holes in their clothing but not a wound on their bodies. They believed the stories about magical intervention and that it was Al Qaeda who defeated the Soviets.

The problem with the right is that they are like bulldogs. Once they get a kill grip on something they can't turn loose. It was the single minded obsession with the "War on Communism" that led to the creation of Al Qaeda. It is the single minded obsession with the War on Terror that leads to the elevation and expansion of Al Qaeda. We elevated their mythological existence by providing them Iraq.

It's very hard to go back and do things right after you've fucked them up so completely, and in retrospect, it's not so hard to understand, from a chess perspective, why we wanted bases in Iraq. For one thing, it is on the border of every country we needed to keep in check, except Israel, because we are blind to the possibility of Israel as a potential future enemy because we give them so much money. They have have demonstrated a taste for the policy of preemptive warfare, which used to be called aggression. It means that you attack first because you're sure the other guy is going to attack and it is thus a defensive move.

My friend Jim used to do a bit about Kid Loco, the psychic gunfighter. The gag was that he would shoot somebody and then explain that because he was psychic, he knew the other guy was planning to draw. That is the policy of the Bush administration. It is a policy popular with very powerful countries who cannot tolerate military buildup in neighboring countries. The justification is that while military buildup in their own country when there's no war is beneficent protection for their citizens, military buildup anywhere else is potential aggression. There is not much public discussion in television media of warfare as a hugely profitable and ever expanding industry. It's mostly just a play by play and stats game, like football.

Mr. Bush continually says that the best defense is a strong offense. He wants to expand nuclear weaponry use and militarize outer space. And he seriously contemplates nuking Iran because they are not responsible enough to handle nuclear weapons. The other way to look at it is that when the cold war ended we had the opportunity to denuclearize the world and we didn't do it. So now we are promoting the idea that we should have weapons in space that can destroy anybody, anywhere, on earth, because you can look around about the whole wide world over and you know you'll never find another honest man.

Well, that plays well with the far right anywhere in the world; their basic belief system is that they are right and thus should impose on the larger group their ideas, as opposed to inclusion and consensus governing. The far left is no different because at the extremes things turn to their opposites.

So here we are, after a period of being governed by people who refused inclusion of anyone who didn't belong to their club, because they were "right." They made decisions without input from anyone else.

We have had to watch them start a war that didn't need to be fought and totally botch it. The mistakes don't need to be recalled because they are too obvious; they boil down to incompetence and greed. They hid the costs and they hid the caskets and they bludgeoned anybody who tried to present a reality based alternative to their ideologically based decisions. Mostly they elevated party members whose qualifications were that they were party members, not that they were competent or experienced. The fact that they were party members in such a narrow group put them outside the mainstream, and made it unlikely they could build consensus anywhere, with anybody, except each other.

What we're left with is an Iraq in chaos, where Al Qaeda is claiming another victory over a great superpower, just as they did in Afghanistan. It's ridiculous of course, because Al Qaeda wasn't even a significant factor until we made them one. They had no significant role in the defeat of the Soviets and they have no significant role in Iraq. But we have actually been doing their propaganda for them, saying that they are a significant force in Iraq, in order to justify an occupation, while saying all we wanted to do was depose a dictator and leave.

We were so blind in Afghanistan that all we could think about was defeating the Russians. It didn't occur to us that it might be in our interests to leave it alone and stay in our own neighborhood, instead of sending our special forces advisors to create professional killers who would turn against us. The same thing happens over and over but we never seem to get it. But the propaganda advantage of making people believe in the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq was really short sighted, because we didn't look at the down side. Now we can't pull out of Iraq without giving Al Qaeda a propaganda victory, and we have our resources tied down there, and are grinding down our military. Tank treads don't last long in the sand, and they ain't cheap.

We walked into a trap, and now all we can do is thrash around in it. Meanwhile, the real focus of the war against Al Qaeda has been neglected, and might fall apart. Iraq was not, before our intervention, a place that Bin Lauden could have set up shop without having his head cut off. Hussein might have been an evil man but he was didn't cotton to fundamentalists. And there's something to be said for the idea that trying to govern Iraq is a good way to bring out the evil in a man.

Because we lied all the way about wanting permanent bases, we couldn't go in, unseat Hussein, and get out. We had to stay because we wanted to "protect" the oil fields. We certainly didn't show any inclination to protect anything else, such as the culture and security of the people. Had we not treated the Sunni people like enemies, had we honored them as the administrators of the country, which they were, and had we left the army intact, we could have exited with grace. But we trampled over everything and everybody as the greatest fighting force in the world.

Everything contains its opposite, and pride goes before a fall. Now we want out, and just as they did in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is waiting to claim victory in a war they didn't affect that much. If we had not given so many people the thirst for revenge, Al Qaeda would have nothing to offer.

As it stands, what they offer is in demand, not just in Iraq, but throughout the Muslim world.

Posted: Fri - November 10, 2006 at 11:23 AM