Naomi Klein sounds a cautionary note for the 'let's just leave now' crowd

"The country is so wrecked. In the absence of any other source of hope, there are people in Iraq who worry that the troop withdrawal would just signify a complete abandonment of country.

Quite frankly, there's a lot of skepticism in Iraq — from what I saw — about the international anti-war movement. In part, it's because anti-war forces were not critical enough of Saddam. But it's also because we haven't proposed this kind of practical solidarity that has to do with improving people's lives, and not just absolving our conscience. Or saying “Not in our name,” and then going home."

http://www.alternet.org/story/21099/

Klein is one of the good ones. But you knew that.

edit: did you see the reparations part? or the part about it not being a military presence? What are your thoughts on that?

If someone had spoken out, the Chimp might not have felt free to nominate Gonzalez. If someone had spoken out about prisoner abuse and Geneva Conventions, that is.

Iraq was off the table...instead we fought about Vietnam. Rove and our own Party Strategists co-opted our message. Played us like idiots, once again. It was hard to read this without feeling angry.

...til people start taking to the streets by the thousands and an organized counter-culture and media develop?

Naomi is spot on that the Iraqis are right to feel there's little solidarity for their pain and suffering or the immorality of this invasion, since they've seen precious little from us. The re-selection of Bunnypants along the media blitz of "mandate" surely sent a message to the Iraqis that the "American people" (the ones we would hope they seperate from the * regime) support the pillage of their country and its continued occupation. They don't read DU or see the Guardian...but they would if there were constant, large protests and other anti-invasion demonstrations that would show them, the rest of the world, and this evil regime, enough of this madness is enough. We can't even decide on who to listen to on the radio.

I'm not sure what an immediate withdrawl of U.S. forces would do in Iraq, but I do know that whatever occurs it would truely be the start of the "end game" to their current nightmare...setting the stage for their next one (unfortunately). The reason I don't ponder this is that no American politician has the stones to truly cut & run...it would be political suicide as the media and wingnut outcry would be severe.

What I envision eventually will evolve will be some "peace with honor" bullshit where we will pull out and our forces replaced by members of the Arab League or some similar organization...or an outright Saigon-style retreat.

there are 1,000 that wanted us gone yesterday, and are willing to die to make that point...the bottom line is that WE ARE NOT THERE FOR ANY GOOD, MORAL, OR JUST PURPOSE...Just to install our dummy government, rape the country of its resources, and use it as a jump-off point for future military exercises in the middle east...

No more of this 'pottery barn' mentality, please

I thought it would be 1 to 500, but your study proved it was even worse than that.

_{NOTE: This post is sarcastic.}

BAGHDAD — Only a third of the Iraqi people now believe that the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger, according to a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll. (Graphic: Iraqis surveyed)


http://www.gallup.com/poll/focus/sr040428.asp?ci=11467


The apologist line that the Iraqis really want us to level their cities, shoot their children, bust into their homes, desecrate their mosques, control their oil resources, and in general order them around and treat them like bad and stupid children, because otherwise the country would fall apart and there would be violence and inter-ethnic fighting would be laughable if only there was anything left to laugh about.

It doesn't jibe with the Blue_Tires survey that says .1% want us there.

_{NOTE: This post is sarcastic.}

I do not see any constructive purpose that can be served by the US military there. None. Only destruction.

I do think that reparations will need to be paid someday -- not just to pay our ethical debt for not finding a way to stop the war, but to restore our good name in the world community.

And finally, I was very critical of Saddam during the 1980's. However, those with my positions were not heard then, as they are not often heard now. Unless you were reading stuff like 'In These Times' back then, you wouldn't have even known anything about Saddam.

(circa '79), and imperialist occupation.

Taking the American face off the mission is a big part of the solution. And imperialism is so much more than just having boots on the ground. For example, it's sort of stunning the way the laws America is imposing on Iraq will just serve to privatize a lot of wealth. That can't remain the case.

TROOPS OUT NOW!
TROOPS OUT NOW!
TROOPS OUT NOW!
TROOPS OUT NOW!
TROOPS OUT NOW!

Get the rapist out of the room NOW!

_{NOTE: This post is sarcastic.}

Because this war was never about bringing democracy to Iraq — at every turn democracy has been suppressed — we have a very clear role to play here. Our role is to support the demands for democracy that are coming from Iraq, where Iraqis are being violently repressed for making those demands.

So we need to move beyond our desire to prove ourselves right because I think that it really has come, honestly, at the expense of the people we are supposedly working in solidarity with.

...

For me the easiest issue is debt. The Iraqis should not have to inherit Saddam's debt. This is a very simple issue. Now this is something Bush has said and James Baker has said. And that's why we feel we don't have the right to say it. The truth is that when Bush and Baker say it, they're lying. What they've actually done to Iraq instead is reduce the debt just enough to make sure that Iraqis can repay it. It was at a completely unsustainable level and was never going to be repaid previously so it was restructured — so that they could demand that it be repaid. Then it was attached to an IMF structural adjustment program that makes debt forgiveness contingent on adherence to incredibly damaging and dangerous new economic (free market) policies.

....


There's another campaign that's evolving around plans to eliminate the food ration program in Iraq — which is just another brilliant idea. Right now, the whole country receives a food basket, and 60 percent of Iraqis depend on them for basic nutrition. But this program is seen as a relic of state socialism by the neocons in charge. So in the middle of this brutal economic recession in Iraq where 70 percent of the country is unemployed, they're proposing eliminating the main source of nutrition for the country and giving people cash instead so they participate in a market economy.

We need to develop an agenda based on the demands coming from Iraq for reparations, for total debt erasure, for complete control over the oil revenues, for a cancellation of the contracts signed under the occupation, and so on. This is what real sovereignty would look like, real self-determination — we know this.

OUR CONTINUED OCCUPATION IS BLOOD FOR OIL! PLAIN AND SIMPLE PERIOD!

What part of imperialism don't you understand?

_{NOTE: This post is sarcastic.}

ah forget it. Four lines-Big letters-One line-Small Letters. Summed it up neatly.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to Ari Shavit: “This is a war of an elite.” Laughing: “I could give you the names of 25 people – all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office – who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.

If you want to rule the world, you need to control oil. All the oil. Anywhere."

Monopoly, by Michel Collon




The American Enterprise Institute...........

"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence -- our existence, not our politics -- threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission."

Actually, we did much the same thing in Japan immediately post-war. Absolute censorship over all media and a suspension of free expression from 1945 until the end of the occupation. The Supreme Commander Allied Powers acting as military governor, overriding the democratically elected Diet at will. The maintenance of the emperor-system on a whim. The writing of the Japanese Constitution.

If you look at it from that direction, the question isn't whether we are too harsh upon Iraq, but are we so soft that success is impossible. Or, is it completely impossible in this day and age to replicate the success of Japan, due to improved communications technology, and the inability of the world to ever form a consensus about anything.

turned Japan into a pretty egalitarian, anti-fascist country after WW2.

There's a professor who teaches medicine at UofWash (IIRC) who argues that it isn't absolute levels of wealth that result in short life expectancies for a nation, but it's the disparities of wealth within a country that influences a nation's health. So, for example, people are less healthy in the US than Ghana (IIRC).

His argument focuses primarily on Japan. The difference between life expectancies and general health pre- and post-WW2 are dramatic. The doctor attributes it all to the US turning Japan into a democracy with a equitable distribution of wealth.

In fact, egalitarianism has such a powerful influence on health that Japan, one of the most egalitarian economies in the world, has among the highest smoking rates, but the lowest heart disease rates.

Interesting, huh?

...in pre-war Japan. The military really held the power, and in fact held the 17 zaibatsu (the 7 biggest, plus the 10 second-tiers) in a fair bit of contempt, applying such epithets as 'pacifistic' to the large corporations.

At any rate, since life expectancy is an average, I would imagine that he has something of a point, although more because any economy with a large middle class is liable to produce longer life expectancies, due to superior health care. Still, the modern US is a good counterargument, indicating perhaps the exceptionalism of Japan in this case.

on the zaibatsu families (or, was it a 100% income tax over a certain point?).

It ended up holding those families back from dominating post war japan, and this doctor says it was one of several major contributing factors to Japan having an equitable distribution of wealth.

...they axed the larger zaibatsu apart, generally into three. Because the zaibatsu were run from privately-owned holding companies, they simply dissolved to companies and forced the families to sell many of the pieces at bargain-basement prices, or simply confiscated them. That's why the old zaibatsu like Mitsubishi and Matsui are still built kind of wierd. The smaller zaibatsu like Nissan escape most of the purging. Of course, they later reformed into the keiretsu of today, but the family dominance was gone, because of the transfers of ownership.

As for the equitable distribution of wealth, that's only relative. The Japanese lower class isn't particularily better off than their American equivalent. In fact, the sheer expense of everything over there makes their middle class far more strained then our own.

is working for the benefit of everyone or just a few, which is why this Doctor's theory holds together so well.

Really, what he's arguing isn't about medicine. He's making an argument that egalitarianism is the best way to make the most people happy, and then correlationg it to a measure that's very obvious, but brings home one of the big problems of inequitable societies: you may be happy that there are people richer than you because you think that's how society should work, but do you really want to die much earlier than rich people?

...but I never much worried about when I was going to die relative to anyone else.

I understand what he's saying. I don't neccessarily agree with him, but I understand.

Consider the healthiest country in the world, Japan. Fifty-five years ago when we were one of the healthiest countries in the world, right after World War II, Japan was less healthy compared to other countries than we are today. Yet the USA gave it the medicine it needed to become the healthiest country in the world by 1978. The medicine was prescribed by the greatest population health doctor who ever lived, General Douglas MacArthur. The medicine administered during our occupation of that country from 1945 to 1950 had 3 ingredients and I will review them here. The first was demilitarization. Japan was forbidden to have an army. The second ingredient was democratization, as MacArthur wrote the country's constitution, providing for a representative democracy, free universal education, the right of labor unions to organize and engage in collective bargaining, and the right of everyone to a decent life. The third D was decentralization, as MacArthur broke up the 11 family zaibatsu that ran the huge corporations that controlled the country. He legislated a maximum wage for the country of the equivalent of $4333 in US dollars. He also carried out the most successful land reform program in history. What this did is bring down the economic hierarchy, and level the playing field. The resulting rise in health is the most rapid ever seen on the planet.

Japan presents some interesting issues about population health. Japanese men smoke the most of all rich countries. Yet they are the healthiest population on the planet. It seems you can smoke in Japan and get away with it. It's not that smoking is good for you, but that compared to other things, it isn't that bad. Smoking is much worse for you in the US than it is for the Japanese in Japan, where the gap between the rich and poor is much less. So I tell people that if they want to smoke they should be born in Japan. Similarly, it isn't Japan's health care system that is responsible for its remarkable health. Anyone who has looked at their system will tell you it isn't much to write home about. I talked before about designer labels, and if you probe, you will find that everyone in Japan shops at designer stores and buys the Gucci icons. That is the key element, everyone wears them. In the USA, everyone wants them, and that is the difference. Japan is a caring and sharing society that looks after everyone and that matters most for your health.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=4647

Anyway, another good quote:


...

NK: Quite frankly, there's a lot of skepticism in Iraq — from what I saw — about the international anti-war movement. In part, it's because anti-war forces were not critical enough of Saddam. But it's also because we haven't proposed this kind of practical solidarity that has to do with improving people's lives, and not just absolving our conscience. Or saying “Not in our name,” and then going home.

Q: I know progressives who think that somehow the world will cheer if the U.S. just gets the hell out. I know at least a lot of Indians would see it as just another example of American irresponsibility: they first invade a country and destroy it and then just leave without repairing the damage — and all in the name of morality.

NK: The people who really would be cheering are the people who see a political opportunity. There are people in Iraq who understand that the wreckage of the country creates an opportunity for them to build their own powerbase.

:+

I actually agree with a lot of what she says about it.

that we refused to pretend that the Evil Saddam was a frigging boogeyman, and we refused to ignore the plain facts that he was, for most of his career, especially when he really was actively doing all the Evil Thangs he was accused of doing, HE WAS OUR GOOD BUDDY, where 'OUR' is not the anti-war movement, 'OUR' is rummy and cheney and wolfie and the whole gang of ex-cold warrior neoclowns. Yeah, the anti war movement is way compromised over that problem.

F Naomi Klein and the rest of the neoclown-apologist hypocritical a*hole media.

The 'anti-war' movement was indeed critical of the endless embargo, which embargo by most accounts resulted in the near total collapse of the civilian Iraqi infrastructure, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children from the effects of that collapse. Yeah, we were critical of that crap.

Another quote from the interview:

I agree that there's a profound responsibility not to abandon Iraq. But the presence of troops is not the solution, which is why we need to talk about reparations.

Elsewhere in the interview, she states that a goal of the anti-war movement should be to "break the coalition", i.e. convince countries like Italy and the U.K. to quit backing Bush.

The gist of her argument is that the Iraqi people deserve more than a "sorry 'bout that, bye.", so the anti-war movement should be promoting a positive alternative to what Bush is doing. There really aren't many people here who disagree with that.

We don't control the media spam that calls itself mainstream, nor do
we get to present our honest views without scorn from the filthy in
the white house.

They have 1 maxim, lie and steal. There is no way to officially win
back a meritous view from the corporate media, when liars and criminal
felons are directing the message, as they do, with bribes and coercion.

So are you saying that we should call for armed support and promote our
own imperialist right wing... the imperialist left... no, i think not.

Then it would be wiser for us to attack bush on his disastrous economic
adgenda and win the next elections based on issues on the home front
and to stop letting them wag us with the tail of silly foreign policies,
and rather call them to the mat for their outrageous spending plans on
wars and more wars. As this war is just the beginning, and an attack
on iran, or cuba, or venezuela, or syria, or another place might well
be expected in the next period of time, something that you'll have
plenty of time to whine about after it happens. We must uproot the
war nazi's root and branch by defeating them electorally, or it won't
matter a fig whether the iraqi people like their occupation with
debts or with another hot war with iran.

lets just take them out too n/t

infrastructure can be re-built and the most importantly the bullshit contracts SCRAPPED without having a US army presence in Iraq.

very few people advocate just "leaving" but staying as an occupying power that draws up it's own rules for the Iraqi people isn't EVER going to fix the problem.

enjoyed it bunches

Ms. Klein apparently is unaware of this.

I read this article by Klein a little while back, just as I read EVERYTHING she puts out there on Iraq. Your excerpt seems to be aimed toward bolstering the idea that Klein is calling for US troops to remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future, and that pulling troops out would be seen as abandonment. Having read the whole article, I find such a line of reasoning to be highly suspect.

Klein is doing two things -- calling on the US to honor its obligations in actually helping to rebuild Iraq as opposed to fattening the pockets of Haliburton and Bechtel while destroying the infrastructure further, and urging the anti-war left to move beyond simply calling for the troops to be withdrawn and to actually start developing strategic plans to help Iraqis get their country back on its feet. At the heart of all of this, however, Klein remains steadfast that the presence of US troops in Iraq is one of the primary PROBLEMS the country is facing right now, and that the resistance will only escalate so long as they remain in force.