Public Opinion

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April 26, 2003

On holidays

Gary at Public Opinion will be on a well earned holiday in Mallacoota on the eastern seaboard near the NSW and Victoria border from today until May 6th.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:14 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2003

poor old ABC

There is an article in the latest issue of The Bulletin by Graham Davis, called, 'Its yore ABC. It argues that the ABC did a bad job on covering the Iraq war.

This was not because of the bias of the left liberal culture in news and current affairs. All news and commentary is biased and prejudiced--some left some right. Rather Davis focuses on the poor news reporting due to the lack of correspondents in Iraq, and it says that the ABC was outgunned by Nine, which has become the national broadcaster. The ABC is no longer the news leader. Davis argues that the current affairs programs--the 7.30 Report and Lateline-- did an excellent job.

I did not see Lateline as I was on the Internet. I saw the 7.30 Report and I thought that it did a poor job as it failed to give us the Arab perspective on the war; not in the sense of dishing up the pro-Hussein line, but give an account, and an evaluation of what was being said by Arab current affairs commentators living in the region. All we ever heard was commentary from the Anglo-American perspective which mostly focused on the military strategy and not the politics of the region.

I appreciate that giving space for Arab commentary on the war would not go down well in Canberra, which dutfully followed the Washington neo-conservative line. But it is the role of the ABC as a public broadcaster to educate. And public opinion needed some education about the Middle East. The ABC failed and failed badly to counter the shallowness, glibness and cartoon analysis of what passes for public debate on foreign policy and national security issues in Australia.

An example? To say that working through the UN was an act of appeasement with all its historical evoking of Hitler and Neville Chamberlain.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 23, 2003

Market morality

In a previous post I mentioned the values that arise from the new market order. Hayek argues that these are the only ones that are acceptable in a Great Soceity.

This article by Janet Albrechtsen, Booming compassion industry fuels insurance disasters indicates that there is no place for compassion in the market order. Its a misguided emotion because the market order is like an evolving lottery.

Presumably, if compassion is not a leftover emotion and ethic from more primitive days, then it would be an appropriate emotion of the volunteer organizations of civil society. What then is the relationship between civil society and the market order? These groups (meals on wheels) do not exist to enable the market order. They are there to enable a society as opposed to a market order. Are they there to pick up the pieces from those who failed to do well in the market lottery?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:54 PM | Comments (2)

Reality check

P. P. (Paddy) McGuinness continues with his attack on the left. He says that:

"...the leftists in the media and elsewhere are doing their best to portray the inevitable chaos following the overthrow of the Baathist regime as the fault of the coalition, and are accusing especially the Americans of any possible offence which might be pinned on them."

The argument of this weblog about stiff Iraqi resistance to the Anglo-American military, a big battle for Baghdad and lack of cheering crowds to the liberating forces turned out to be wrong.

The weblog's argument that the US would maintain a permanent military presence in Iraq and that it would face significant Shi'ite opposition is looking to be a plausible one. The Shi'ites see US reconstruction and rebuilding Iraq as occupation, and they want the US out so they can establish an Islamic state. The implication drawn, that the US would not allow the Iraqi people to elect a theocracy in Iraq, looks to be a realistic one.

Raising problems and concerns hardly engaging in efforts to blacken the actions of the US.

And the big suprise from the war? Part of Australia's pay off for being a loyal ally is a juicy free trade agreement FTA) with the US.

The long term consequence of a free trade agreement with the US? Greater integration of Australia with the US. Less Australian culture provided by Australian cultural institutions since Oz content rules would have to go. A reduced ability by the state to deliver core public services?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:08 PM | Comments (1)

River Murray fiction continues

In this story the fiction that the River Murray is still a river is continued. Terry Plane and Andrew McGarry write:

'A HUGE deposit of sand dumped by a king tide on the western reach of the Murray mouth threatens to close the river this week, in spite of six months of dredging aimed at keeping it open.

South Australian Environment Minister John Hill described the condition of the river mouth as "desperate", and said it looked as though dredging would not keep the mouth open.

"I had a report last week that things were looking good," Mr Hill said.

"Then a king tide pulled a whole lot of sand in and now we're facing blockage again. Things are pretty desperate."'

The impression given is that the river threatens to stop flowing due to the king tide dumping heaps of sand. Well, the river stopped flowing 18 months ago. All that is happening is that the current dredging in the Mouth Mouth inlet is to keep sea water flowing up to the Goolwa barrages and into the Coorong. There is no river to keep flowing since the River Murray has been reduced to a series of irrigation pools. And there is little likelihood of river flows before 2004.

The calls for a decision to be made on increased environmental flows at the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council in October are for flows to return the Murray to being a river. But extra flows means a high cultural change in the river country to treating the river as a river and not as an irrigation channel. That involves clawback of water from irrigators an NSW and Victoria. That involves people changing the way they have previously used water. That then means changes to the way they have traditionally earned a living from using water from the River.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:18 AM | Comments (1)

April 22, 2003

The Australian: a neo-con flagship

Robert Manne's Neo-cons get a powerful voice argues one what this weblog has suggested: that The Australian has become the flagship of the local neo-con crowd in Australian. It has become the space from which to launch further attacks on the left in the culture wars in Australia.

The Australian had always been hostile to postmodernism and the leftwing writing of Australian history. It has opened its pages to those who launched their attacks on the academic left in the name of conservative social values and cultural criticism that defended Western values. The front of the cultural war to destroy the intellectual and practical basis for socialism and social democracy has been broadened with national security and the war on Iraq.

Western values mean Anglo-American: the values of the market order such as negative freedom and prosperity; an opposition to collectivism and big government; a conception of the moral order of the free society that is opposed to social justice; an extremely limited role of the state in providing a minimal safety net; the role of the state is seen to sustain the market order not direct it; and a reliance on tradition;the intellectual elite knows better what the rules of the market should be than ordinary citizens.

Anglo-American values means preserving democracy as a method of choosing
governments whilst emptying it from any substantive content and disengaging it from the doctrine of popular sovereignty. This is done to ensure that the powers of government are exercised within strict limits.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:36 PM | Comments (8)

April 21, 2003

good ole capitalism

I have refrained from writing about the collapse of some of the major Australian corporations. These more or less speak for themselves--incompetent management and corporate that is the norm in Australian capitalism. But the collapse of HIH is a different kettle of fish. The Report by Justice Neville Owen on the HIH debacle opens up a window onto the dark side of capitalism---what business writers call dubious practices.

HIH was just a vehicle to make money by the bottom feeders. As long as the money could be made these suckers, who called themselves advisors, lawyers and merchant bankers, couldn't care a hoot if HIH turned belly up. HIH was a fee-takes picnic.

There is a classic paragraph in the Moral Hazard article by David Brearley in the Weekend Australian (No link, p. 25, April 19, 2003). It says:

"The greed was spectacular. Everywhere they were men with contempt for others people's money and jyet nothing but lust for money to call their own. They had a disturbing attitude to what they regarded as small sums----anything up to, say, $5million.

Some of them weren't even witnesses before the commission, but merely names that existed in abstract, faceless players in this or that regretable episode. They lived in London or Monte Carlo or maybe some island in the Carribean, and their sole professional function in life was to deal with money-- source it, shift, it, grow it, hide it, work it. These men live in a vacuum." "

The word missing is moral--- ie., capitalism as a moral order. The world of financial capitalism is a moral vacuum. It is nihilistic, as the values of liberal society have long been eroded and emptied out. This is a capitalism that is destructive of liberal society. What are called dubious practices are little different from the actions of a gang of robbers and thieves.

HIH means ithat it is hard to take Hayek seriously when he goes on about the learned morals of the market order that underpins the Great Society. What are the morals that arise from exchange and the marketplace in the HIH case? What are the moral critieria that are necessary for the survival in an impersonal market order? What are the moral rules that the evolutionary logic of the Great Societ has give rise to?

Are the libertarians going to say the responsible individualism of the spontaneous order? HIH indicates that the individualism is little more than the individualism of a bunch of robbers, pirates and looters. Are they going to say that Rodeny Adler, Ray Williams, Dominic Fodera and Daniel Wilkie were striving for excellence, suceeded better than others and deserve great praise?

It is not a case of safeguarding the Great Society from the socialist dangers that threaten it, as Hayek argues. The danger comes from the marketplace. Its a wrecking ball. Libertarians can hardly argue that capitalism lack moral legitimacy because only because the moral ethos of socialism (altruism and solidarity) has been allowed to dominate public debate.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:22 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 19, 2003

Being modern

I have previously mentioned in passing the fracturing of Reaganite conservatism in the US between the neo-cons running the foreign policy and the paleo-conservatives (one nation conservatives). It is a fault line judging by Among the Neocons, which was a response to this attack.

In contrast, Australian conservatism remains cohesive. Both the One Nation conservatism of Fortress Australia, (centred around Tampa, detention centres for asylum seekers and closed borders to refugees) and the neocon's (with their all the way with the US to manage the terrorist threat, war with Iraq and Australia's role as loyal ally of the US in the world of nations) are both firmly locked in behind John Howard. It is the left liberals who are on the defensive. They hold the Iraq war to be wrong and the closed borders refugee policy to be immoral; see the US superpower to be a threat; claim that Howard is a racist populist, and argue that Australia's liberal values are being corrupted. These left liberal views, which are articulated by the ABC and the Fairfax Press, have a beseiged air about them.

Australian conservatives are not a very good guide to the conservative understanding of the geopolitics of the Middle East. It is more fruitful to turn to those American One Nation conservatives, such as Pat Buchanan, who are dissenting from the US neo-con stategy. In his To Baghdad and Beyond Pat Buchanan explores the consequences of the first war of American empire. He makes 3 points re US neo-con foreign policy.

1. To the neoconservatives Iraq is but the first engagement of a long war for glory, empire, and “democratization” of the Islamic world;

2. The neocons will fight to kill Tony Blair's proposed road map for the Palestinian/Israeli conflict to implement peace in the Middle East. Sharon and his right-wing Israeli regime reject this idea utterly and were elected to resist such a peace.

3.Turkey holds that an independent Kurdistan is a mortal threat to the unity and territorial integrity of their country, Turks are determined not to let the Kurds take over the oil fields that could make a Kurdistan a viable state. To prevent it, Turkey is prepared to invade.

Buchanan says that with victory and the occupation of Iraq by American troops, America's time of troubles in the region have only just begun. He 's right. The signs of the troubles are the pressure for a conservative or fundamentalist Shiite regime; conflict with Syria and calls by Iraq's neighbours for the US to let Iraqis form their own government..

Buchanan does not say what the neo-cons have signed up to in terms of understanding history. We can gainan insight here if we turn to English conservatives, such as John Gray. He argues that the neocons believe:

"...that modernisation is a process that can have only one result, the universal spread of American-style market states - and that anyone who resists this happy outcome is struggling against the irresistible forces of history."

The neocons assume that there is only one way of being modern and it is American. Thats what John Howard style conservatism presupposes.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:42 PM | Comments (2)

There's something going on here

There are lots of online stories about the clash between protestors and police outside the Baxter Detention Centre in Port Augusta where asylum seekers are now housed by the Commonwealth Government.

But there is very little about the Commonwealth's response to the Akram Al Masri judgement by the Federal Court, which declared that the Howard Government could not hold refugees indefinitely when they had no country to return to.

The response by the Commonwealth? To dump 2 Iraqi refugees from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, who were under detention in the Baxter Centre, in the Port Augusta Square at night. They were left there stranded with few possessions. Some had been in detention for over 3 years. They were dumped in the square at night by Australian Correctional Serives officers under instructions from Canberra. This action took place on the cusp of Easter.

No compassion for the refugees was shown at all, even though Australia has just fought a war with the oppressive Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in the name of freedom from a brutal tyranny that controlled its population through fear and torture. Treating Iraqi refugees this way makes a mockery of the Government's reason of fighting the war to free Iraqi people. The Australian Government is indifferent to the wellbeing of the Iraqi people.

There is a long history of this indifference.

So much for the Christian values the Australian neo-cons say they uphold in their defence of the noble Western tradition. They violate the ethos of Christian compassion with every action they take to ensure that refugees are treated as criminals.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:27 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

April 18, 2003

signs of a civilization

There has been much rejoicing over Saddam's downfall this week in the US which continues to celebrate its own particular values as if they were universal ones. Though some in the US media are sceptical.

On the one hand, we have the push for democracy in Iraq. On the one hand there is a push to target of Syria; on the other hand a veil of silence is drawn over Israel. Our interpretation? The Middle Eastern map is being redrawn by the US in terms of the division of the region into 'good' and 'evil' regimes to futher Israel's strategic objectives.

On the one hand, we have American troops guarding the Oil Ministry in Baghdad; on the other hand the Americans allow the looting of the National Museum of Iraq to go unchecked. Lots of interest in oil but none in the protection of cultural heritage.

Are these the signs of civilization and barbarism? Well,I read somewhere that the Anglo-Americans allowed the general looting to happen to show the Hussein Iraqi regime that it was all over.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:16 PM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2003

ain't going nowhere

I'm still catching up with the reading of the newspapers. I notice that The Australian reports "that internal ALP polling reveals the party is in dire shape and would lose a string of marginal seats in NSW, Victoria and Queensland."

The article goes on to say that:

"The sharp fall in support for Labor has spooked ALP figures, who are concerned that John Howard will call an early double-dissolution election to exploit his – and the Coalition's – ascendancy....Newspoll shows Labor would lose up to 16 seats, its two-party-preferred support slumping to a 10 per cent gap against the Coalition. The 55-45 per cent projection is a marked deterioration from the 51-49 per cent result at the 2001 election."

A lot of it is internal party squabbling. But there is intellectual feebleness as well since the ALP is not involved in the public; addressing the Israeli-Palestinian question debates about reshaping the Middle East; the geopolitical implications of the war with Iraq; the broader implications of the US dominance of the world orderin terms of Iran and Syria in the Middle East and Indonnesia in the Asia Pacific regions. There is a need for a positive contribution and not just ongoing criticisim of the tendency of the Howard government to join the US bandwagon.

The failure is nerve is being noticed. Thus Maxine McKew in last weeks Bulletin says in reference to the Israeli-Palestinian issue:

"....where is the ALP in this debate? The party's near-total public silence on this is bewildering, all the more so when one considers the role that prominent Labor figures such as Bob Hawke and Gareth Evans are playing on different stages. Both Hawke, through his vast network of contacts, and Evans, from his Brussels-based International Crisis Group, are talking about new parameters for a breakthrough solution."

The world is splintering into those who support the US view of how the world should be run and those who opposed to it. Where does the ALP stand? Constraining the US use of pre-emptive military force? Using the UN to place restraints on US dominance of the new world order?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)

Sunshine and shadows

There is an article in todays Australian Financial Review by Tony Harris called, 'Reform has a sunny side' (subscription required, AFR 15 4 2003, p. 70). He is reviewing Michael Pusey's new book, The Experience of Middle Australia.

The book charts our social experiences of economic reform from the 1980s to the late 1990s by drawing on opinion polls, focus groups and responses from between 200-400 'middle Australians'. It unveils the dark side of economic reform: people being worse off; having less security; reduced welfare; negative superannuation returns. The social experience is that middle Australia has carried the unfair share of the 'adjustment burden' of economic change.

Harris's objection is that sociology can only see the downside of reform. We should see the sunny side of the economic reforms. These have increased the overall standard of living and enabled Athe Australian economy to weather economic storms, including the Asian financial crisis and the recent US recession.

Tony Harris leaves it there with his message of a needing a bit of balance---sunshine and shadows. This theme is taken up by Claude Smadja in the Sir Robert Menzies Lecture 2000, 'Living in an Era of Anxious Prosperity. He attempts to capture both sides of economic reform.

He says that things are bouncing along in the world economy quite nicely in terms of prosperity but people are anxious. We citizens are anxious because of the speed of change; a governance vacuum due to the disintegration of traditional political power of the state; and an abdication of governments due to the shift to a smaller role of government.

The response by Claude Smadja, who is the MD of the World Economic Forum,to this state of affairs is twofold. He acknowledges that financial markets create friction, chaos and confusion leading to more backlash and alienation. He then argues that political leaders and goverrnments need to play a more assertive role as the ultimate arbiters among diverse interests in order to ward off endemic social instability. (The state as umpire).

Claude Smadja sums up his core thesis thus:

"And so we are in a situation where we need, in some respects to catch up on the political front and the social front with rapid development that we have seen on the economic and technological front. We need to think a little bit more about new political models that our societies need to put in place to cope with changes."

The 'we' here refers to the big corporations who need to develop some corporate social responsibility. Janet Albrechtson will have none of this "politicizing of commercial enterprises" because "Directors are paid to save the company not the world." However, Smadja, argues that this corporate social responsibility makes good sense in terms of their long term business interests because there is a need to heed off those non-government organizations in civil society who are expressing the concerns of citizens, their anxieities and uncertainities. They are increasingly seen as an alternative to the established institutions of liberal democratic life.

On this account liberal democratic governments are being squeezed by big corporations and activist NGO's. This is especially so in relation to the environment where both government and coporations are on the defensive from NGO's who point out the destructive environmental consequences of economic growth.(eg., the Murray-Darling Basin).

The Howard Government in Australia sees as one of its tasks converting knowledge into jobs and income through a 'can-do community' by harnesssing the creative energy of the people through leadership. An example of this is Landcare. However, this enabling role of government in a globalized world is made more difficult because of the democratic impulse that is now represented by the NGO's in civil society.

In terms of the environment the recognition of the democratic deficit of the institutions of the state becomes obvious at the level of the local action plans. "Harnessing" ciitizens to further the public good does not involve a deepening or broadening of democracy at a time when the River Murray runs dry.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:31 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2003

University reform

My pre-occupation with renovations has meant that my eye has slipped from domestic public policy issues. Maybe they've gone quiet because of the war. I'v noticed that higher education in the form of university reform has come into the foreground. Brendon Nelson promised lots in terms of reforms from a social liberal perspective, and so offering more than the standard neo-liberal fare of deregulation, privatisation and corporatisation. Neo-liberals or economic rationalists are broadly hostile to politics beyond that minimum necessary to sustain a nightwatchmen state. Social liberalism works from the norms of fairness and decency have hitherto played a central part in Australian public life

But its a fizzer. Basically there is no public money because of the war. Budget savings are the order of the day. Future funding is on a promise a year or so out.

What seems to be happening is deregulation of student fees (students are to pay more for courses), deregulation of the academic labour market (more flexibility in salaries, individual contracts and downsizing). The social liberal side of the reform was limited to financial incentives for students living in regional communities to study at tertiary level and new funds to help universities "promote teaching excellence" through buying the latest information technologies and other teaching aids.

What is most disappointing is that Brendan Nelson has continued to work within the old policy framework of the universities being characterised by massive inertia, in need of substantial modernization, and reform plans to ensure that the universities continue to become ever more instrumental to economic interests. This is a pathway to the universities being increasingly governed by the market and producing market values.

So the tendency of the liberal university to contribute to the knowledge economy by becoming a high-tech entrepreneural university continues, and the humanities continue to be downgraded along with the possibilities for facilitating a civic education that nurtures or builds the civic capacity of citizens to enable them to be active and informed citizens and to exercise agency over their social, political and economic lives. The humanities are downgraded as the university becomes a core institution of a high-tech society. As the old interpretive traditions of the academy (a life of scholarship and collegial governance) are quietly buried the humanities become the new creative industries. Humanities'scholars reinvent themselves as innovative designers

Not sure what the reinvention of the new humanities as creative industries means? This should set you right: its a rosy future based on the new technology. Long gone is the search for unalienated labor in academia that is akin to a spiritual striving. As Chutney says:

"The idyllic life of the idealized academic harkens back to simpler times—when a PhD could be at one with their work and at peace with the world—times which may have never existed in the first place, but times that academia hold out implicitly as the just reward for PhD work."

In the high-tech entrepreneurial university the educational managers have no time for such traditionalism.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Back to the future

Whilst I have been busy painting the electronic cottage Economic Development Board has handed down its draft report on the future of economic development of South Australia. There was also an Economic Summit in Parliament House, (Friday and Saturday) that was attended by 280 delegates from business, the arts and the community that discussed the report and the strategies needed to boost economic growth in the state.

From what I can gather from glancing through The Advertiser the strategies involved shifting the emphasis for future development on to business and industry leaders – and so getting rid of "corporate welfare"; increasing government efficiency through removing tenure for public servants and cutting back on the plethora of boards and statutory authorities advising the Government.

The report is about South Australians shaping their own future. The Economic Summit was very upbeat. Consensus had been achieved. There was an overwhelming desire to reignite South Australia; business, unions, political and community leaders united to deliver a blueprint to steer the state for the next decade; and the Rann Government accepted 85 per cent of the recommendations contained in the draft Economic Development Plan.

From what I can make out from the newspaper coverage it is about streamlining the processes of Government, removing impediments to business, and throwing off the archaic ways of the past that hold the state back.

The Rann Government has rejected eliminating tenure for public servants as a means of achieving government efficiency. But it foreshadowed smaller government with a tough budget in which public servant's jobs will be axed and some government departments will have spending cut by up to 7 per cent in next month's State Budget. This is on top of previous cuts to the public service over the last year.

The Advertiser does not go into much detail about the recommendations in the Economic Development report. What it says is that:

"...the EDB's 129-page draft plan recommends tripling exports, adopting new policies on finance and education, streamlining government and overhauling the Public Service. Strategies to bolster the state's population, upgrade ageing infrastructure and improve planning and land use processes are also spelled out."

Thats pretty minimal. Standard Advertiser journalism. I presume the reporters are reworking press releases and haven't read the draft report. But it appears that sustainablity does not warrant a mention let alongbeing a central policy goal. Its all about boosting economic growth with little consideration given to water or a sustainable Adelaide. It is not even a report about ecological modernization.

The ecological modernization strategy involves a process of industrial innovation encouraged by a market economy and facilitated by an enabling state to ensure environmental conservation. Even that is too radical for the Rann Government. It seems disinterested in enabling the reform of production processes in the viticulture industry to reduce waste (of water), reduce energy consumption (going renewable) and reducing the environmental impact through water recycling. Sustainable development has disappeared into the piles of dusty bureaucratic files in South Australia.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:40 PM | Comments (2)

April 14, 2003

Debating Oz foreign policy

In this piece Australia must never become Asia's poodle Des Moore opens up the debate about the direction and nature of Australia's foreign policy.

Moore briefly outlines the conservative position:

"With the liberation of most Iraqis, the Howard Government's courageous decision to deploy military forces points to Australia now becoming both an international leader in promoting freedom and an active participant in that cause.The pursuit of such a role in the new terrorist world is undoubtedly in Australia's interests.

He then acknowledges that this policy means an increased importance for the American alliance. It involves:

"...a major departure from our previously perceived strategic policy [and] ...will seriously disturb those keen on a closer relationship with Asia and on playing down our American alliance."

He describes this position as argued by Paul Dibbs (the link to the article in The Age dropped out), which involves the view:

"...that our US relationship complicates, even challenges, our relationship with Asia, and threatens to divide us from some parts of our own region; that this is the result mostly of recent American behaviour and Australia being seen as America's deputy sheriff; and that the solution is to distance ourselves from the US by building a reputation for a more independent, and even sometimes dissenting, position."

That's pretty much the position argued for on this weblog and accepted by most ALP members and associated academics. So what does Des Moore think is wrong with this position? He says that it:

"... pits our US relationship against our association with Asia in a kind of zero-sum game: closer engagement with Asia is allegedly possible only by lessening our US relationship, thereby becoming more independent and so acceptable to Asia."

Well, that depends on how we interpret independent and becoming acceptable to Asia.

Moore gives the latter (becoming acceptable to Asia) an odd interpretation: it is simply currying favour with Asia, making ourselves more acceptable in Asia and becoming Asia's poodle. He says that Australia is "not Asian and cannot become so even if we tried."

True, Australia is not Asian. It is in Asia. One problem with Moore's interpretation is that Asia is seen as monolithic bloc. Are we talking about Indonesia? China? Japan? India? Malaysia? Pakistan? These nation states have conflicting strategic interests. Asia is not a monolithic bloc. It is impossible to make Australia acceptabe to all of these. You cannot be the poodle of all these masters at once. Nor can you curry favour with all of them.

So it comes back to Australia's national interests, independently determined. Moore acknowledges that Australia's national interest will not always coincide with America's. He accepts that when that that happens, "we should not - and do not - hesitate to say so and to fashion our policy accordingly."

He then gives his opponent's position a quirky interpretation:

"What we should not do - but would do if Dibb and others had their way - is seek to manufacture differences with America to make ourselves more acceptable in Asia, which far from being impressed would be contemptuous."

Arguing for a greater involvement for the UN in world affairs is hardly manufacturing differences with America. It's a real and significant policy difference about how to govern international relationships between nation states.

Moore interprets Australia becoming more independent, and even sometimes dissenting from US foreign policy as an abdication of responsible concern for Australia's national interests. It implies that Australia "is truly independent only when it differs from the US, which is an absurd measure of independence."

Not at all. There may be occasions when Australia's strategic national interests coincide with those of the US in the Asia Pacific and there will be occasions when they do not. Independence here means autonomous ie., deciding for ourselves what is in our national interest. This is what Australia did in the 2nd World War when it pulled troops back to defend Australia from Japanese attack, rather than defend British interests in India; and when Australian troops where pulled out of Vietnam.

Moore interprets his opponents to mean Australia is distancing itself from the US, not because we genuinely disagree with a particular American position, but simply to curry favour with Asia. This distortion allows him to say that such a position is "dangerous nonsense" and "an abdication of responsible concern for Australia's national interests."

More erects a strawman based on his pitting our US relationship against our association with Asia in a kind of zero-sum game. It is not a zero sum game: it is about autonomy or deciding for ourselves.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:20 PM | Comments (5)

trouble ahead

I have not been following events in the Middle East since the fall of Baghdad due to renovations. I have only had time to glance at headlines and catch snippets of news.

For those interested this from the excellent Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri) gives a round up of the reaction to the fall of Baghdad amongst the Arab media. The diversity of views make for interesting reading and they indicate that the Middle East is a volatile region.

The most informative are from the Iranian media in the light of the role that the Shi'ite Muslims will play in building a democratic Iraq. The reformist press talk in terms of the Iranians, as natural allies of the Iraqi Shi'ites, using this opportunity to help their Iraqi brethren enjoy democratic institutions, such as moderate and representative political parties. It says that Iran should not try to revolutionize the Iraqi Shi'ite community, as this would fracture its unity and and so forfeit "their legitimate right to participate in the post-war Iraqi community.

The conservative press in Iran are more hostile. It is argued that the U.S. "does not want to see a coalition of the [Kurdish] PUK, [Kurdish] KDP, SCIRI, and other legitimate Iraqi opposition groups take control of Iraq" because it was "opposed to the will of the Iraqi people and the establishment of real democracy in Iraq." The U.S. plans to install a military governor in Iraq, and the eventual elections and a transfer of power back to the Iraqis, is seen as a plot to buy time in order to install a pro-U.S. puppet.

Instead of dismissing that insight about how a future Iraqi regime will be viewed in the Middle East we can redescribe it by introducing some useful remarks by Hugh White. In his recent Position vacant: puppets apply. He says

"...the key challenges to US objectives in Iraq are political. Washington needs to build a government, and indeed an entire political system, that can hold Iraq's fractious regions together, retain at least a veneer of democratic legitimacy, deliver effective administration, and serve US strategic objectives."

He offers a warning:

"...the more democratic and pro-American Iraq becomes, the less it will fit into its neighbourhood and the more its citizens will feel divorced from the wider Arab and Islamic world. In fact, it may be a zero sum game. The more any government in Iraq is sympathetic to US strategic objectives, the less acceptable it will be to the Iraqi electorate. Take just one policy issue. Will the new Iraqi government be pro or anti-Israel? It is hard to imagine Washington being happy to install a government in Iraq that retains the Arab world's implacable hostility to America's main Middle East ally. But it is equally hard to imagine the Iraqi electorate supporting a pro-Israel government. So a democratic, pro-US government in Iraq may end up being a contradiction in terms."

Contradiction is not something the black and white' neo-cons are used to handling or even bothering acknowledging. They just assume a democratic Iraq will be stable and cohesive, support US strategic interests, be a shining light to democracy in the region and act as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalists. Its projected wish fulfilment with all contradictions to be solved by fear of big military power.

In putting a finger on contradiction Huge White takes us beyoond the naivety of Tony Parkinson who thinks that democracy in Iraq will come about by asking the Iraqi people, the change in other Arab regimes will one way broadening of democracy, and that the Iraqi people will trust the US. This sort of reasoning indicates the lack of knowledge about the Middle East in Australia or much understanding of the geo-political regional power considerations. It's all simplified by Parkinson into a battle for democracy.

White's contradiction cuts through the media fog.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)

And so the war continues

I have been struggling with Michael A. Ledeen's The War against the Terror Masters as a relief from renovations to the electronic cottage and making the shift to a new city pad. Ledeen is a freedom scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. I'm finding the book boring, tedious and deeply disturbing.

What is disturbing is Ledeen's philosophy. It presupposes that human beings are evil and so virtue must be imposed; that winning is everything (might is right), that decisive military action is what is required not diplomacy; that it is best to order the world through the US being feared; and though luck plays havoc with plans, the strength of the US wil overpower the terror masters.

This gives a particular perspective on the Middle East. Ledeen says:

"We should not have left the Middle East battlefield without bringing down the regime of Sadam Hussein. Had we seen the war through to its proper and logical conclusions, and installed a representative government in Baghdad, we would probably not be facing the challenge of the terror masters. We certainly would not have to worry about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being unleashed on us or other Western countries. "

Well, that was the reason for the war even though little public evidence was ever presented that the terrorists masters ruling Iraq were responsible for 9/11 or stood behind and supported Al Qaedi and Islamic Jehad. The reason doesn't really matter for the neo-cons. It is enough that the regimes in the Middle East are hostile to the US and threaten its strategic interests in the Middle East.

Ledeen then says:

"We must hope that our leaders will not repeat these mistake, and that, once the tyrants in Iran, Iraq , Syria and Saudi Arabia have been bought down, we will remain engaged, just as we must remain active in Afganistan."

The policy is to establish a new regional order in the Middle East through redefining the regional nexus of power. As Ledeen says:

"...the ultimate targets are tyrannical regimes. We will require different strategies in each case. We will need one method and one set of tools to bring down Saddam Hussein, another strategy to break the Assad family dictatorship in Syria, a very different approach to end the religious tyranny in Iran, and yet another to deal with Saudi-Arabia's active support for fundamentalist terrorism and the terror network."

This is what sits behind the Australian neo-cons, such as Christopher Pearson and Miranda Devine, when they advocate the doctrine of pre-emption in opposition to a conservative internationalism. In an article called Syria and Iran Must Get Their Turn, was was written after the book was published in 2002, Ledeen ups the anti in the war talk. His reading of recent events is that Syria and Iran:

'...are coming to kill coalition forces, which means that there is no more time for diplomatic "solutions." The United States will have to deal with the terror masters, here and now....This is the path--the correct path--that President George W. Bush has charted, despite the opposition of so many of his diplomats, and despite the near-total indifference of the Western press to the plight of the Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian people."

So the diplomats need to be shoved aside because "It's time to bring down the other terror masters" as fast as possible.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2003

returning to a state of nature?

The New York Times has a timely editorial called Aftermath: The Bush Doctrine. It says:

"After the three-week military campaign that dispatched the regime of Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration may be tempted to unleash American forces against the next fire-snorting dragon down the line, whether in Syria, Iran or North Korea. While President Bush has every right to be pleased by the victory in Iraq, he should not confuse the military achievement for a validation of his doctrine of pre-emptive strikes...

...For many people and nations, the way the Bush administration went after Saddam Hussein confirmed fears raised by the doctrine. That is one reason why the move to war drew so much opposition around the world, and why this page urged the administration to pursue its goals in Iraq within an international framework. A doctrine that purports to spread happiness, but ends up spreading resentment, is not working, no matter how many statues come tumbling down."

The way it went after Hussein? Its slash and burn approach is one that leaves the rest of the world having to live in the wreckage of the storm called progress. This is the view of the liberal internationalists--it is a return to a Hobbesian state of nature What else is the shift from statue-toppling and impromptu street celebrations to looting and factional violence? What else is the destruction of one of the world's finest collections of antiquities, the Iraq National Museum?

As Paul McGeough says:
"It is a cultural catastrophe. Yesterday the museum's exhibition halls and security vaults were a barren mess - display cases smashed, offices ransacked and floors littered with handwritten index cards recording the timeless detail of more than 170,000 rare items that were pilfered."

As the war draws to a close the ongoing attack on the UN and a call for a full-throttle assault on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East continues. For a recent example from the Murdock Press, see Victory's no excuse for easing up. And the Bush administration has Syria in its sights

Is this preparing the ground for an ongoing world war against the enemies of liberal civilization?.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)

Howard's victory

There is a great line in Geoffrey Barker's article in the Australian Financial Review called 'Howard: short-term glory precedes the long term story' (subscription required). It reads:

"One of Howard's achievements was to gain maximium political traction from minimal military presence."

He has succeed in that. His domestic political support has strengthened. And the long term story? Howard is commited to securing the peace in Iraq and the US occupation authority moves aside and hands the administration for Iraq to an Iraqi government that is acceptable to the US and is legitimate for Iraqi citizens.

A big one. The flowers, dancing and kisses could easily turn into the American military governors fighting an Iraqi insurrection and desperately trying to prevent a unitary Iraq from fracturing into three separate regions: a Kurdish north, a Sunni Muslem middle and a Shi'ite south.

On another note. Did I hear the political gossip right? That the popular Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph is John Howard's favourite newspaper? I see its where that Michael Duffy fellow writes.

Note the massive neo-con rewriting of history taking place---the reasons for the pre-emptive war on Iraq now have nothing to do weapons of mass destruction, international terrorism, or 9/11. Its all about the brutality of a totalitarian regime.

The significance of that position in terms of the war's broader message? Why the emboldened Washington neo-cons are now talking about standing up the the tyrants and terrorists in the Middle East: Syrai, Iran, Saudi Arabi, Egypt, and Jodon. The only democracy in the Middle East is Israel. They are calling for the downfall of all non-democratic regimes in the Middle East.

Ambitious programme this regime change. All the regimes in the Middle East bar Israel need liberation. Pre-emptive strikes are the way to go.

I guess those cheerleaders, Michael Duffy and the Daily Telegraph, know this and they and accept that waging war is the way to keep the flame of liberty burning brightly. The lesson they've drawn from the great military campaign that liberated Iraq was that the US need not, and should not, wait around to be attacked before attacking.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:01 AM | Comments (1)

April 11, 2003

a democratic Iraq?

Gareth Parker says the anti-left find it hard to admit the fall of Baghdad. And Tim Dunlop reinforces this when he says that there is:

"...a fair bit churlishness in some of the leftist/anti-war responses to what has happened, an unwillingness to enjoy the moment even as they despair at the path that got us here and the unknown one ahead."

Let me speak simple. Its good a dictatorial regime that oppressed the Iraqi people has gone. Now the Iraqi people have a chance to self-determine their freedom. I hope that the old Iraqi regime is not able to continue a guerilla-style war to undermine the attempts by the Iraqi people to create their own democratic society.

So why the reservations noted by Gareth and Tim? On my side it lies with concerns I've raised before here and here. My concerns are similar to those raised by Robert Weaver and duly noted by Gummo Trotsky. This is a war fought for political ends. Its the politics that has always been my central concern. The military invasion was an instrument to further the politics.

Will the US empire deliver on its promise to deliver Iraqi democracy? Let us speak simply. It won't deliver substantially. It is not in its strategic interests to do so.

My argument? A democratic Iraq is an instrument to achieve its strategic goals in the region. The old dictatorial regimes cannot be trusted to act in terms of US interest because they are only to willing to harbor Islamic terrorist organization. Hence regime chance.

You canot have a democratic Iraq because the Shi'ite Muslims are the majority and they are aligned with Iran which ahas been declared a member of the axis if evil. The US did not fight a war to increase the power of Iran. Iran and Syria are its enemies and they are targeted to be taken out if they make moves to challenge the empire.

So democracy in Iraq will be very limited. Iraq will be liberal not democratic. It will be designed by the US occupation authority to prevent the majority Shi'ites from gaining power and running the new Iraq. So mechanisms will have to be put into place to prevent/constrain, deny the Shi'ites their rightful claim to power. Its the ethnic faultines that are the worry.

So who then is going to run the new Iraq? The Kurds? Turkey will not allow that. its troops are already massed on the border. The Kurds too will be constrained from exercising the power that is rightfully theirs. So we come to the Sunni Muslims. The same ethnic group that ruled Iraq under the dictatorship of Sadam Hussein.

That's the argument for my reservation. The Empire's strategic interests will determine the form of the regime in Iraq. That new regime must identify its national interests with those of the US.

Alerion over at Southerly Bluster says it well:

"In short, we've been here before. If the Bush project for Iraq as a beacon of democracy is to succeed [then] they need to avoid the mistakes made by the British empire. British policy created an authoritarian state built on a narrow Sunni élite dominating the Shi'te majority and the Kurdish minority. Imposing Chalabi, (formally Shi'ite but actually so Westernised that his Shi'ite credential are in doubt) would just repeat the British error. If Bush actually wants this imperial project to succeed he needs the UN and he needs advice from people who know something about Iraq. Seeing everything through an Israeli filter will not work."

Of course, I may be wrong. The Empire's pro-consul and his administration may set up a federal political structure within a nation state to enable autonomous regions based on ethnic groups.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:32 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Margo's finger on the button

In this piece Margo Kingston spots something. This is the first paragraph:

"A man with a job to do speaks bluntly of the savages war makes of men as the man who ordered him to do this, at a summit with Tony Blair, mourns the loss of fallen Allied soldiers sacrificed to this war of 'liberation' and pointedly fails to mention the innocent Iraqis also sacrificed. He knows that his mighty force has just dumped four giant bombs on a restaurant in a suburban area on the chance Saddam might be there. Up to 14 innocents are dead."

What is troubling is the lack of compassion for the suffering of the Iraqi people. by President Bush. Yet the Anglo-Americans are fighting the war on behalf of the Iraqi people. So why no compassion? The lack is one of legitimacy. It highlights the way the US has transformed from republic to empire. The new ethos is respect for our power. Might is right. What is promised is democracy for Iraq, but the experience of reconstructing Afghanistan is sobering.

Margo's second paragraph is not the one about John Howard talking in terms of sweet nothings. It is about the Labor Party:

"The opposition, which failed the Australian people so terribly in failing to hold Howard accountable for his big lie before the war that he had not already committed us to it, is now irrelevant, reduced to public brawling about the failings of a leader before it's even decided on a replacement. This is an opposition which failed to insist that a decision for war without the backing of the Australian people stripped a Prime Minister of legitimacy, an opposition which failed to argue a sustained, powerful competing vision for Australia at the time we needed it most. It is cowed, broken, unable to rise to the occasion on at a time when it was imperative that it did so."

The good old light on the hill that guided them through the late twentieth century has gone out. This is a party that is rotting inside. It too has lost political legitimacy and has become concerened with power for its own sake.

Political legitimacy is important. When it is discarded as irrelevant, as Gerard Henderson did this morning on Radio National Breakfast, it returns to bite you hard.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:01 PM | Comments (6)

have we forgotten something.

Lets face it. Australia has done its job, or served its purpose, as the 'loyal ally'. Australia can be effectively sidelined by the Americans in the aftermath of the mopping up after the war.

We can get back to the concerns of our own region. Intellectual bloggers can discuss whether Australia even has a foreign policy, the Howard Government can fire pots shots at the UN and the Labor States and conservative bloggers can continue laying seige to the left.

Did I hear otherwise on the news? That Australia may be involved in Iraq after war? What was it ? Looking for all those weapons of mass destruction that have disappeared. Being a partner in the coalition's transitional authority in Iraq? Weren't we meant to come back home once we'd paid the premium on the the insurance policy?

Now don't tell me. Did I hear right? That the UN are the good guys and are needed in reconstructing Iraq? Heavens I thought they were the bad guys. That there can be no compromise.

Oh, and what was that about Osma bin Laden?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 10, 2003

Deliberation

Of and on these last few days I have been mulling over the remarks by Ken Parish here. Ken says:

"Regular readers of Troppo Armadillo will be aware of my vision of blogging as a vehicle for development of a neo-Athenian-style democracy, in which respectful and open-minded civic dialogue sustains a tolerant, engaged and informed citizenry."

He then poses a problem for the formation of public opinion through deliberation:

"...it's only been the entrenched, unyielding prejudice of both sides in the Iraq war issue that has imposed a reluctant acceptance that the real world bears no resemblance to my idealised vision and never will.Apparently thoughtful, rational people on both sides interpret exactly the same facts in diametrically opposed ways to fit their preconceived and immovable viewpoints, or choose to believe only those press reports that suit their ingrained prejudices."

Its a big problem for deliberative democracy. It is assumed that group discussion is likely to lead to better outcomes, if only because competing views are stated and exchanged. We start from partial views formed by our biases (prejudices) and through a conversation we shift from our partial view and come to appreciate the view of the other participants.

What Ken highlighted was a process of group polarization where members of the conversation move towards more extreme point of their original viewpoint. The result is increasing polarization not consensus. We get deliberation within enclaves where people hear the echo of their own voices. Opposing voices are really heard. Few are left in the vacated middle. People start talking about the hate speech of those in the opposing camp. The relationship between the two camps becomes one of an ongoing feud or war. So we have a divided nation.

Ken never did address overcoming the problem. Maybe in such circumstances it is the very jarring that loosens up the horizons of the self-insulating enclaves within which we live and we become aware of alternative voices. Maybe.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

Andrew Bolt: One of a kind

I thought that scenes of wild celebrations would bring out the worst in the pro-war journalists. No suprise then when this little bit surfaced:

"And written in the blood of this war is a moral lesson some will find as grotesque as it is true: the West has won because it is free. In fact, that's the secret of the West's supremacy for so much of the 2500 years since the rise of the Greeks -- even the most ruthless dictatorship is little match for free men fighting a just war....this war is even so a triumph of our civilisation."

It's from Andrew Bolt.

The West is superior to Islam. What does the West include? Germany? Italy? Or is it just the Anglo-Americans? Or does the West mean a liberal civilization? He means "a free, inquiring and self-critical democracy" and that would exclude France and Germany because they didn't go to war with "a closed, dissent-murdering tyranny."

And Andrew pushes the superiority theme:

...."It's far more likely that Saddam's humiliation will make many Arabs confront a truth that has too long been suppressed -- that their abject weakness is born of their own flawed societies.They are ruled by bomb-waving dictators, ayatollahs, generals and playboy kings, yet remain impotent. Their terrorists may kill Westerners, but their armies cannot defeat them. Just ask Israel. Four times Arab armies have joined to try to wipe out this democratic nation of just six million people, and each time they have been slaughtered.

Now Iraq, once the scourge of Iran and Kuwait, has collapsed in mere days before another Western army, half the size of its own. Hiding from the truth is no longer possible. Many Arabs will grudgingly realise after this that only Western ways now can make them strong -- not nuclear bombs, but freedom; not conscripted soldiers, but elected politicians."

This is the ugly side of liberalism. Triumphant, cold war reflexes, hostile to what is different; unwilling to accept that Arab civilization has liberal tendencies; relishing the slaughter bench of history. It is supremacy that is being pushed here.

Even Anne Coulter does not go so far. She only uses the war celebrations to twist the knife into the traitorous liberals:

"Liberals are no longer a threat to the nation. The new media have defeated them with free speech – the very freedom these fifth columnists hide behind whenever their speech gets them in hot water with the American people."

It is even worse than Charles Krauthammer who content to talk in terms of "the surgical removal of a one-party police state while trying to leave the civilians and the infrastructure as untouched as possible."

But it is difficult for a leftie to engage in critique as we are entrapped in self-contradiction and incoherence?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:04 PM | Comments (2)

a bit of a round up

This gives an account of Bush/Blair Belfast summit, whilst this talks about the battle of Baghdad in terms of an under ground battle to capture the Iraqi regime's command control centres. And where is Saddam? In Syria according to this report. More descriptions from Robert Fisk

This is a bit gloomy about Israel /Palestine peace prospects post the Iraqi war.

This is about how the meanings about war become embedded in everyday life. To round it of some light reading from a jewish right-wing think tank called Jewish Institue of National Security Affairs.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)

April 9, 2003

Patriotism by jove

I have just come across Gerard Henderson's piece on patriotism called Rallying around the flag is no jingoism.It starts off well. He recycles George Orwell, who, in his Notes on Nationalism, defines patriotism as involving:

"...devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people".

Gerard codes this as love of country and says that it is one of the phenomena which hold modern democratic societies together. I basically concur with this conception of patriotism. What Gerard needed to do next was to ask himself two questions:

can those who are criticise Australia's involvement in the war be patriots? You know all those Western intelligentsia types such as writers, actors, professionals, even journalists who deeply oppose the Bush-Blair-Howard position. And,

can the Iraqi's resisting the Americans be patriots?

The second question never gets a look in. The first one is sidestepped. But the implies no they cannot in this paragraph:

"But they [the intellectuals] conflict with the basic patriotism of the vast majority of Australians. Most citizens proudly support their fellow citizens when representing their country."

It's good ole smoke and mirrors. I can love my country (the landscape, the institutions and the people) and still oppose the war on Iraq. I will support the troops and hope they come home safe and sound, but I will not rally around the flag used to justify a war on Iraq. Mine is a tough love. Edmund Burke, that good old conservative boy, puts it well when he says, "To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely."

That's tough love.

The upshot is that the right does not have a monopoly on patriotism. There is patriotism and patriotism as you can see from this jumble.

See Henderson's smoke and mirrors trick? We start off with love of country and we end up rallying the flag of war. In between the two there is an abyss. I won't say anymore.

Suffice to say that I will leave Gerard's odd remarks on nationalism for another post.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:43 AM | Comments (18)

April 8, 2003

another kind of war

I caught a bit of 7.30 Report tonight. Judging from the footage would seem that the seige of Baghdad is far from over. Marines smelling the roses in the palace grounds and and sitting in Saddam's chairs play well back home. But it would seem that the Iraqi ' have given up that western section of Baghdad to defend eastern Baghdad. In terms of an engagement all we have is US tanks firing from the west bank of the Tigris on targets on the east bank of the river.

I missed this by Gary Anderson. But it makes a lot of sense. Gary says:

"The assumption that President Saddam Hussein is looking at the battle of Baghdad as a glorious last stand is inconsistent with his character. There is likely to be a greater game afoot. Saddam is an admirer of Ho Chi Minh. He has also studied the American debacles in Lebanon and Somalia. He and his staff have had 12 years to think about how to fight."

All the media are thinking in terms of the battle of Baghdad as a HIGH NOON. Rober Fisk thinks in terms of Hollywood blockbuster terms,LAST DAYS OF SADDAM..

But the media continually forget about the politics: how resistance to the Americans plays in the Arab world. The 3 week resistance recreates Saddam the hero of the anti-western movement in the Arab world. The more he hangs on the more he becomes a hero.

As some middle class Jordanians who had studied in the US observed on 4 Corners:

Man 1 "Let me put it this way - Saddam was a tyrant, now he's a leader for the Arabs. He kind of... Everyone's looking up to Saddam nowadays because he is standing up to the United States of America, and that's something really big in the Arab world for an Arab leader to stand up to United States. Maybe in the back of their minds Saddam was bad but now he's not bad anymore."

MAN 2: "He's already won this war. This is what people don't understand in the Western world. Our battles in the Middle East, sadly to say, our battles are 48 hours, 12 hours, a few skirmishes - the longest battle that ever lasted was I think a week, six days. This guy's made six days against the United States of America."

So how does the Iraqi regime fight to achieve this political goal? Gary Anderson says that the game plan is quite different to the American race to take Baghdad in 30 days.

"Against overwhelming US and British conventional military superiority, he must develop a three-pronged strategy. Phase one assumes eventual defeat in a conventional war. If defeat is inevitable, he must make the most of it. The next precept is to make the conventional phase last as long and be as bloody as possible for the coalition....to attempt to turn Baghdad into an Arab Alamo, making "Remember Baghdad" a battle cry, for future generations and the rest of this war. At this point Saddam will go into hiding or exile, portraying himself as having led a glorious struggle against imperialism and vowing to continue."

We then move to a guerilla-style warfare in which "war will be an attritional struggle against occupying forces and any Iraqi interim government." The aim is to wear down the Iraqi interim government then overwhelm it . Success
"would transform Saddam into a darling of the Arab world."

It makes more sense that what I hear in the mainstream media.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

the politics of blogging

The post media dogs of war at philosophy.com about public reason captures an important aspect of blogging. It is the public debate/ civic conversation side of blogging, which has fallen into a bit of a hole in Australia, due to the partisan nature of the war in Iraq.

The despair "at the almost complete absence of calm, reasoned exchanges on any blogs since the war situation blew up early in the New Year" was expressed well here.'The atmosphere', as Ken Parish puts it, 'has been more unpleasant and acrimonious'since the war with everyone trapped inside their prejudices or biases.

The public philosopher with a Hegelian bent at philosophy.com has usefully connected blogging to the formation of public reason and deliberative democracy. (It has lots of links). The post---sort of philosophy behind the news--suggests that a public reason in such dark times can be critical--cut through the fog of war instead of lefties and rights smashing one another up.

The idea of public reason was tied to the agora, forum or coffee shop. Athenian democracy is what Ken Parish appeals to. Mark Poster questions Ken's Athenian democracy model on the grounds that the Internet instantiates new forms of interaction in the public sphere. He says that the old loci of interaction were:

"...the agora, the New England town hall, the village Church, the coffee house, the tavern, the public square, a convenient barn, a union hall, a park, a factory lunchroom, and even a street corner. Many of these places remain but no longer serve as organizing centers for political discussion and action. It appears that the media, especially television but also other forms of electronic communication isolate citizens from one another and sustitute themselves for older spaces of politics."

To all intents and purposes the media are the new public sphere, and blogging is part of the media. The Internet as a mode of life does away with face-to-face interaction in favour of electronic flickers. So we become electronic beings without bodies who produce photos of ourselves to show that are not cyborgs.

Maybe we need to re-think what we mean by the politics of the Internet?

Some think that the answer is being non-partisian By this is meant ensuring independence of thought:

"A partisan pundit is one whose opinions nearly always break down along party lines. When two people agree on everything, it's pretty certain that only one is doing the thinking. Assuming that it's unlikely that a partisan columnist is actually formulating the party platform, then the partisan columnist's opinions must therefore derive from allegiance to the favored party or hostility to the other party rather than from independent thought. "

Others reckon independence of thought needs to take a critical form to counter the spin and fog. A good account of what is here is provided by the mission statement of Spinsanity. This says:

"Robust political debate is essential to democracy. Our national political discourse is an important part of the democratic process and serves as a critical check on those in power. We are therefore deeply concerned that our public political dialogue, largely expressed through the channels of the mass media, is becoming systematically dominated by sophisticated tactics of manipulation rather than norms of public reason. Despite widespread complaints about spin, no one is adequately documenting the full ramifications of this development to our satisfaction."

So they set themselves the negative task of countering the spin as a way of protecting the norms of public reason. The task they set themselves is to:

"...expose the use and intent of the simulated reason and public relations techniques that dominate political discourse, and to document how they are disseminated through the media. By exposing these tactics and demonstrating their pervasiveness, we hope to create a greater awareness of how spin operates and corrupts, and contribute to a healthy and vibrant political discourse."

Two suggestions for the politics of internet connected to cyberdemocracy. Both see blogging as a politicized place of resistance to corporatized media flows of the culture industry. Is not that a common ground between righties and lefties?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:40 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 7, 2003

Strike First.

The Strike First policy of the US dumps 50 years of US military doctrine. This had been based on a speedy response to aggression without the US being the first to strike another sovereign nation-state.

Strike First means early action. It means forestalling certain destructive acts against you by an adversary. So Australia can use it against Indonesia. China can use it against Taiwan. India can use it against Pakistan. Israel can use it to strike first against the Arab neigbours. The Israeli military attack on the Jenin refugee camp in 2002 would be legitimated by the First Strike doctrine. Turkey can use the doctrine to justify attacking the Iraqi Kurds.

So Russia's President Vladamir Putin uses it against Chechen nationalists. Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon uses it to target Palestinian Intifada. Iraq could have used it to justify its attack Kuwait.

What we have is might is right in an anarchic world spinning on fear and distrust. The Americans are pretty clear about it in the Midle east. Check out this symbol from Central Command in Qatar: the American Eagle over the Middle East. Its how the Arabs read it --as domination in the form of

"....a new American imperialism. It has also been described as intended to create a new regional order in the Middle East, often compared to the Sykes-Picot agreement after the first world war, which created the Muslim nation-states. Some American right-wingers are already talking about taking over and ‘reforming’ Saudi Arabia, Iran and and the Gulf Arab states once Iraq is conquered. The emblem of the US force in the Persian Gulf (above) certainly does nothing to dispel suspicions of American ambitions, showing as it does the American eagle with its wings spread over the heart of the Muslim world."

The article says that two things can constrain this might is right conduct now that the UN and its conception of an and the international order of equal and independent nation-states has been displaced: American arrogance setting off a counter response amongst other nation states and Islam. The article says:

"Today no one can have any illusions left about the nature of the modern West, or doubts that Islamic movements offer the only road to the true liberation of Muslim societies and—eventually—of non-Muslim victims of Western imperialism."

So much for secular liberal-democratic societies being created in the Middle East. A liberal democratic soceity in this region would define the US as an enemy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:59 PM | Comments (2)

On the money

This article gets it right.

"Under the cover of the fog of war, the Howard Government is trying to drive the final nail into Medicare as a universal system of financing health care."

The neo-liberals cannot launch a full frontal assualt so they will create a two tier health scheme. Its instruments of attack are the $2 billion private health insurance for an inefficient, high cost private health industry; underfunding the public hospital system; and undermining bulk-billing by GPs by setting the scheduled fee at an unrealistically low level.

If the Howard government was genuine about maintaining Medicare in its entirety it would increase the scheduled fee on the basic GP consultation by $10, to bring it in line with what doctors now charge. It would redirect the 30 per cent private rebate to public hospitals. that wil not happen. We will see more and more public money going into subsidising the private health iindustry.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:37 PM | Comments (0)

Sigh

I guess we should have expected this sort of stuff from the right. This is Paul Sheehan's piece in the Sydney Morning Herald called the 'Rise of a dangerous nationalism.' He says:

"After just two weeks, all that remains of Saddamistan is a shrinking, ranting, desperate, isolated rump collapsing down to its essence - guns, terror and hatred. There's nothing else left. Oil wealth: gone. Economy: gone. Territory: almost gone. Ports: gone. Airports: gone. Border control: gone. Credibility: gone. Ideals: never existed."

Its the last bit, 'ideals never existed' that caught my eye. It basically means that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was just a stalinist terror machine. But Iraq under Saddam was more than a concentration camp. So why did the Iraqi regime try to use the oil money in the 1970s to modernize the economy? Why did they fight a war with Iran? Was not the ideology of the Ba'ath party pan-Arab? Are there not ideals embodied in these actions?

Sheehan does see this in a distorted way, when he says:

"Ethnic solidarity, not Islamic fundamentalism, is the force driving continued support for Saddamistan and hatred of the US.The emotional drive and intellectual energy comes from something deeper than espousing the righteous of Islam - the sense of rage that the Middle East is being colonised all over again, an anger exacerbated by self-pity, envy and racism. It takes precedence over all other narratives, including Islam, including even the atrocities committed by Saddamistan against Arabs on a large scale."

There are ideals here---eg., those of ethnic solidarity and freedom from foreign colonizers (now the good ole Anglo-Americans.) What Sheehan does is to collapse these ideals into the wild negative emotion of rage. What pops out from this reduction is that Arabs, as the under or colonized class, are ruled by their passions not by their reason.

There is an old marker lying on the side of the road here. It is one that says Arabs are lowly under-developed types soon to be ruled by superior developed Anglo-American types. Why under-developed and develpoed? Because the former are ruled by violent emotion the other acts according to reason. That one reaches back to Plato. The new white occupiers are the guardian class with all the knowledge to run the country.

The cultural marker on the side of the road is also a part of a history of the 20th century whose heritage can been in the lines of the map of the Middle East which are are the legacies of colonialism. Sheehan knows the legacies well. He identifies them as those "dividing Iraq and Kuwait, Syria and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the four-nation territory of the Kurds and the white-hot lines dividing Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories."

The colonial history reaches beyond the Anglo-Americans to centuries of occupation by the Ottomans, Persians and Mongols. They understand what it is to have their country occupied. So the old marker indicates a colonial discourse that still haunts the Middle East.

This discourse locates the current war within a colonial history that sees the parallels between now and then.

This colonial discourse constructs the Anglo-Americans as foreign invaders, the Americans as being in the empire business. Thus the Iranian leadership observes the encroaching US military presence on its borders as Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait – and soon Iraq too – host American troops. The occupation of Iraq will lead to the completion of a military ring around Iran which has been targeted as part of the axis of evil. If that does not cause concern in Tehran’s political circles, then the prospect of the prospect of a ‘clientised,’ pro-US Iraq being used as a launchpad to foster tension against the Islamic republic woudl set nerves on edge in Tehran.

Sheehan constructs the response to the new empire ---Arab nationalism or pan Arab/Islamic nationalism as dangerous. He uses the imagery of earthquake to imply destablizing the region.

But dangerous to whom? It can only be to the new American empire and the old Arab states that have supported the Americans.

So Sheehan is writing within a colonial discourse as he sees this nationalism in negative terms. The critical intellectuals then contest, deconstruct, expose, reject and condemn this newly forming colonial discourse.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:41 PM | Comments (5)

April 6, 2003

Wogblog and multiculturalism

The melancholy cultural critic over at a heap of junk for code has a post called good ole wogblog. It responds to the recent criticism of public opinion by the conservative ethnics over at Wogblog who are full on in favour of the war. The cultural critic connects Australia waging a war on Iraq to multiculturalism within Australia.

Wogblog runs the standard line on multiculturalism one of white Anglo-Australians oppressing the migrant ethnic communities. The twist in the conservative ethnic discourse is to attack the [middle-class] left as being full of shit and falling into a moral abyss. This is the left that has historically defended multiculturalism in Australia, initially from the working class exploitation (canon fodder) of migrants, then in terms of an aesthetised cultural diversity, now in the postmodernist terms of representation, difference, identity and the other.

My sporadic reading of wogblog is that it is working class multiculturalism with an intense dislike for left liberals, the chattering class, the academic left and elite cultural types who love their caffe latte. It is of the people.

So what sort of multiculturalism is defended by wogblog.One that has changes working in migrant communities so that there is a loosening up of old ethnic traditions, customs and habits. It is less embattled and defensive; not in the sense of Anglo-American assimilation; rather it is one more open to taking what it useful from Anglo-Australian culture and discarding what is a handicap in Italian culture.

Such a multiculturalism would fracture the conservative discourse that John Howard appeals to, since whatever the minor shifts Howard has made, his contituency has been, and still is, resolutely in favour of assimilation in the name of national cohesion. The effect of Wogblog operating in this conservative discourse would be to undermine--white ant it---from within.

If Wogblog is genuine about multiculturalism in Australia (ie ., not an assimilationist in disguise) then wogblog stands firm with the left in defending defend the Islamic and Arab ccommunities from the institutional racism of Anglo-Australians who despise this cultural difference and see these ethnic communities as potential terrorists. Of course, as is well known, Wogblog hates the left, and so the effect that Wogblog has as a conservative ethnic is to fracture multiculturalism into conservative and left factions and sets them against each other.

Wog blog in short is a trouble maker. A fairweather friend of the national security state.

We can say more though, if we look at the war on Iraq from the perspective of multiculturalism If we do so we see that its got a coloured dimension, which is rarely mentioned. It is mostly white Anglo-Americans fighting brown Arabs. And so Wogblog's fiery war talk places him on the side of the whities who are killing Arab civilians with cluster bombs. And where is the left that Wogblog despises so much? Why using their skills to defend the Iraqi people from the spin about the destruction wrought by Anglo-Americans bombing their country with cluster bombs in the name of freedom.

However, Wogblog has little respect for the left (ie., left liberalism) and dismisses their anti-war arguments, and in junking them as just so much hot air and empty rhetoric, wears the mantel of anti-intellectualism. So maybe the wog in the wogblog is just a mask worn by an old fashioned neocon operating on gut feeling?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:59 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Dancing over the rainbow

The war mood of the last few days in the Anglo American nations is an upbeat one. The Americans have captured Baghdad airport and advanced their tanks into the outer suburbs of the city meeting with little resistance. Iraqi civilians are fleeing Baghdad. British tanks have shot their way into the centre of Basra but still face dogged resistance from paramilitary fighters loyal to President Saddam Hussein. Saddam seems to be living a movie.

The public mood is one of ' soon the war will be over' then the peace.

The American mood is one of satisfaction and relief due to rapid military success in encircling Baghdad. The battle for the city will be clean and swift, the big tax cut will deliver the joys of growth from supply-side economics, whilst economic development is just around the corner. The Bush adminstration is on target to be re-elected, whilst the Democrats divided and largely silent. Washington is already dancing somewhere over the rainbow.

This is a detailed description from Robert Fisk, just prior to the battle. This is a detailed description of the first day.

How will the battle for Baghdad play out? Will it be like Basra? Are there historical precedents? Which precedents of urban warfare are most appropriate This suggests Warsaw being defending the Poles against the German war machine. It is a variant of the Grozny scenario mentioned below. This suggests the Tet offensive in Vietnam . This interview gives an indication of the Iraqi regime's hopes and strategy.

Meanwhile the Bush administration's planning for a postwar Iraq is running into several hitches. Unsuprisingly, Australia's voice is nowhere to be heard, even though our foreign minster talks a lot about it

And it appears from this article that the conflict between Europe and America will increase with the anti-isms on both sides (anti-Americanism and anti-Europeanism) deepening. Once the threat of the Soviet Union united them; now the Middle East divides them. But America no longer really cares about Europe.

The neo-cons must be dancing joyously over the rainbow gaily waving their plans to reshape the Middle East.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

All the way with the USA?

There are a couple of lines in thsi piece in Australian Financial Review that are of interest in trhe light of the previous post. The four paragraphs are:

"The top US military commander [Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff] has publicly asked for Australian forces to help stabilise Iraq after the war is over, even though the Howard government has ruled out a peacekeeping role...The potential tension between Australia and the US over a longer-term deployment to Iraq came as US forces seized control of Baghdad's international airport on Friday....Defence Minister Robert Hill has started to adjust the government's public rhetoric about Australia's postwar military presence, apparently in anticipation of a US request...

....After repeated government declarations that Australia would not participate in a peacekeeping force, Senator Hill said on Tuesday: "While we don't see a major role for the ADF in the postwar environment, Australia is committed to playing a worthwhile part in the rebuilding of Iraq." It was an ambiguous remark, but an apparent acknowledgement that a US demand was likely and that Australia would have to offer to play some postwar role in Iraq."

Note the little words 'have to'. It implies that Australia will be required to go along with US requests. The two journalists, Peter Hartcher and Geoffrey Barker, then say:

"Politically, the government is aware that its US ally is becoming more demanding as the world's hyperpower, and Canberra has shown no sign of daring to say no to any US demand."

Canberra has an opportunity to stand up to Washington by refusing to be part of an occupying force, limiting its role to humanitarian aid and advocating that the UN should be in charge of nation-building Iraq. Canberra does not have the courage to say no to the Bush Administration.

The lack of resolute political will of the Howard Governemnt will reinforce its image in the Asia Pacific Rim as the deputy sheriff of the USA posse.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 5, 2003

Howard's tactics fail

As the days of the Iraqi regime draw to a close the support for the war has stabilised at around 51%. The war had become more acceptable to the electorate once the shock and awe show started, even if some of that support is soft.

But Howard has failed in his wedge tactics. His conservative constituency that is fearful of immigration, opposes asylum seekers, is worried if not hostile to Islam remains locked in. But Howard hasn't been able to get enough support for the war to use it as a domestic wedge. They tried. Though there is growing support for the Australian troops, it is not for the war or for Australian subservience to the Bush Administration.

Since the broad even split in the electorate blocks wedge the old tactics of bullying, bluff and aggression don't bite. Nor did the old tactic of using Australian personnel fighting a war to hit Howard's so hard that they're afraid to hit back. Neo-cons like Chistopher Pearson can go lyrical about the totalitarian left and cheap anti-war populism in the Weekend Australian (April 5-6, p. 30) but it fails to scare anyone out of uttering any criticism.

The wedge has been such a failure that the Howard Govt is now talking up the the very UN it was trashing a few weeks ago. We need the UN to give legitimacy to the new Iraqi regime. Of course the Bush Administration is having none of this pro-UN stuff. The US will dictate and control the remaking of Iraq and thats that. So how far will Australia go in its dissent and criticism of the US? How far willl it go in asserting a more independent voice?

At this stage Alexander Downer is not doing very much, if we judge him from this quote.Downer made it when he was in Washington:

"....to put the case that in the post-conflict environment we would like to see some UN involvement in Iraq. We've been pleasantly surprised by the very positive reception to that message that we've received from the President downwards. I think the Administration knows only too well that there needs to be some UN involvement."

'Some' UN involvement? Even the Bush administration agrees with some. Only they say 'the some' is very minor. What is the Howard Government's response? Agreement? And what is Downer saying about the US desire to go after Syria and Iran? Is there a big dissent there from Australia? Or is the Howard Government's position not that different to the Bush administrations?
The much loved Miranda Devine has no doubts. She says:

"Better to bring it on now, at a time of our choosing, with all the cockroaches gathered for a showdown out in the open in Iraq, rather than cower at home, our economies shrinking, our civilians picked off, our enemies growing stronger, until we finally wake up to the fact that fighting is necessary, and find it's too late and we are too weak."

Lets have the showdown now, says Miranda.

Has Miranda been watching too many late night cowboy movies from Hollywood? Gianna sorts Miranda out.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

media diversity

Like John Howard this weblog has been critical of the Australian media for its coverage of the Iraqi war. However, our reasons differ. John Howard thinks that the media has been too negative; too concentrated on civilian casualities. My reason is the Australian media has been caught up in the that Anglo-American perspective on the Iraqi war. The Australian has been over-the-top in its war enthusiasm; arguing the case as repetitiously as Howard and ridiculing dissenting voices. Instead of punctioning the over-blown advertising for war it regurgitated Howard's slippery emotional logic about world now being a dangerous place, and we will feel safer about international terrorism if Saddam is taken out.

The Australian media, including the browbeaten ABC has relied on the military briefings of the Anglo-American forces and the news from embedded journalists in the Coalition military machine. Apart from SBS, the Australian has refused to take the stark images of civilian deaths caused by the clean American smart bombs offered by Al Jazeerah.

The narrow horizons of the Australian media has been a big disappointment given the global village, the internet and global media flows. And the American media was little better. Is this the reason that people are turning to the Internet? for their information?

What was lacking in Australia was the various perspectives from commentators Arab countries in the region. How were they seeing the war? What was their understanding of the consequences of this conflict for the Middle East? How did they understand US geo-politics? How did they see the designs of the Bush administration on Iran and Syria?

So the effort and energy of this weblog went into hunting for diversity, and finding different Arab voices. You may not agree with the arguments presented by these commentators that we linked to, but they needed to be considered to make a judgement about the actions of the Australian Government in supporting the US position. Without these alternative Arabic voices there was no real debate.

it is good to report that the English version of Al Jazeerah is now online. So it is easier to access material, such as this pece which argues that Killing the few to liberate the many is a line most Iraqis reject. Or Jordan looks nervously west as well as east. Or this piece saying that War in Iraq shows first signs of destabilising Saudi Arabia.

This diversity of media enables us citizens to become more informed about the war. We need to do so because the Howard Government has consistently acted to deny this dimension of democracy. As the post Remembering on a heap of junk for code shows, the Howard Government has been more concerned to defend its stance by manipulating public opinion in the manner of publicity industry. The contradiction highlighted there shows that thsi conservative government has an elitist contempt for democratic citizenship. Our place is to shut up, to listen to the words of wisdom from our leaders and to go along with its course of action. Resignation to what is is what is required from us.

What the previously linked articles from the Arab media have shown is that the US has little credibility in the Middle East outside Israel. Its moral capital/authority earned from the Marshall Plan after WW2 has gone, and so liberating Iraqi people to make them an example of democracy, freedom and liberal civilization in the Middle East is view with wariness, suspicion and hostility.

The US is not trusted because it is using military instrument to achieve its political objectives of bringing democracy to Iraq. It is also not trusted because it is acting differently to its own values.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:26 AM | Comments (5)

April 4, 2003

Here's hoping

Let 's hope that the battle of Baghdad turns out to be nothing much, rather than than another Beruit or Basra.

As Guy Rundle says:

"The most humane result would be a quick end to the actual war, with the collapse of the Iraqi army and leadership, and a perfunctory and rapid battle for Baghdad. Pockets of organised resistance would continue in the north and east, but they would be subdued quickly."

It would mean less human suffering for the Iraqi people. The last we want is another Grozny.

However, as Rundle points out the long term will be different:

"Of course, once Iraq has been conquered, an intifada of sorts will continue for as long as US coalition forces occupy the country."

But thats another story. Its avoiding a Grozny that is of concern in the short term.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:16 AM | Comments (0)

Governing Iraq

This is dry but very informative. It is a history of governing Iraq by the British. It is continued here.

If this history is any guide the Americans are going to have an interesting and turbulent time. Me thinks that no good wil come out of it.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)

April 3, 2003

Over the top?

In this piece Tony Parkinson, the international editor of The Age, warns about the oppositon to the war going one step too far. He says:

"Principled opposition to the war in Iraq is one thing. Wishing defeat and humiliation on the United States and its allies is another."

The incident upon which his comments are based on a statement made by Nicholas de Genova, an assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University, who told a campus protest meeting/ teach in last week that, "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the US military...I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus."

At Mogadishu in 1993 there was a firefight between US intervention forces and the Somali militia. The enduring image that Mogadishu now stands for is the corpses of two American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu after their helicopter was brought down by rebel rocket fire. It is an image of barbarism.

For one response to this from the left, see the post, Moral Idiocy by Invisible Adjunct:

"What concerns me is something far more serious than mere intellectual stupidity: namely, the moral idiocy of his stance. There's no need to belabour the point, which is simply this: To call for the slaughter of the young men and women who are currently serving as American soldiers is to speak from a position of utter and absolute moral bankruptcy."

Is Parkinson seriously saying that the broad response by the anti-war left is one of desiring, or calling for, Australian soldiers to be dragged through the streets of an Iraqi city? I have come across no such public statements. We can redescribe the image of Mogadishu. It could be an example of urban warfare along with Belfast, Beruit and Grozny another. it is a style of warfare the Americans are not comfortable with, and do not have a good track record in.

Parkinson says that this stance by de Genova represents an extreme variant of a broader phenomenon that is at work in the Iraq debate. What is this broad phenomena? He says:

"...this atrocity has become not only a triumphant symbol for Third World gangsterism - but also a new mantra for those in the ganglands of the Western intelligentsia who seem anxious for the superpower to get its comeuppance whenever it engages with the outside world."

Ganglands of the Western intelligenstia? That's a neo-con fantasy. Gangland implies that the academic left is ethically vacuous or morally bankrupt as distinct from just raising questions about Anglo-American patriotism. Is this the case?

In response to criticism Nicholas de Genova puts his remarks in historical context here. The context is one in which:

"...Iraqi liberation can only be effected by the Iraqi people themselves, both by resisting and defeating the U.S. invasion as well as overthrowing a regime whose brutality was long sustained by none other than the U.S. it is an anti-colonial struggle for self-determination might involve a million Mogadishus now but would ultimately have to become something more like another Vietnam. Vietnam was a stunning defeat for U.S. imperialism; as such, it was also a victory for the cause of human self-determination."

The bit about freedom is what Parkinson ignored when he said that the opposition to war translates into something more insidious a desire, subconscious or otherwise, to see US, British and Australian forces falter in their mission. What is not addressed by Parkinson is the clear distinction made between the brutal Iraqi state and the Iraqi people; the determination of freedom being placed in the hands of the Iraqi people; and seeing the US as constraining positive freedom.

That's hardly ethically vacuous or bankrupt. Isn't freedom what the Anglo-American coalition is fighting the war for? To free the Iraqi people?

The left reads that goal in terms of both freedom for the Iraqi people from the tyranny of totalitarianism and freedom for Iraqi's self-determining their own democratic nation-state. A question mark is placed over the Anglo-Americans because it is feared that the technocratic Enlightenment will falter in terms of achieving these democratic goals. It is more a case of the the military methods undercutting the stated political goals of freedom, than desiring that a superpower gets its comeuppance through military defeat.

If we read the events in Iraq in tragic terms then we can interpret the current actions of the militarized Enlightenment in terms of a hubris or arrogance that will have disastrous long-term consequences in the Middle East and in Indonesia. That's very different perspective from the wishful thinking of the comeuppance perspective attributed to the academic left by Parkinson.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:50 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 2, 2003

Mapping the future

This is a good account of how the future strategic reshaping of the Middle East, which is hinted at in Washington, has its source in the Sharon Government in Israel. It has the detailed strategic plan of what to do next, and it has given this credence by conecting it with Washington's war of terrorism.

Israel and Washington's strategic interests are in the process of merging and on the way to becoming identical. Both states are now fighting a war on terrorism. The state supporters of terrorism are the same--Iran and Syria. Washington's enemies are Israels. And the Syrians read it that way.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:33 PM | Comments (0)

Labor Party troubles

It increasingly looks like the case that all the state Liberal Parties will be spending most almost all the next years in the purgatory of opposition. As Hilary Bray puts it:

"The future of the Liberal Party is to see all their most talented members head for federal parliament, of forswear electoral service in favour of the higher salaries available in the private sector. State Liberal teams will become increasingly bereft of talent, and will win elections only by default, when the ALP totally stuffs up and there is no other credible alternative."

However, in the federal area its a different story. The impact of the war on the federal ALP continues. The cracks---between the anti and the pro-war groups --- can no longer be papered over. As always the cracks find expression in leadership turmoil and speculation. Its either Rudd or Beazley says Michelle Grattan meaning that Crean's goose is cooked and treachery's deft hand and smiling face is plainly visible.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:07 PM | Comments (0)

Kurdish fragments

I have been looking for material about the Northern front, the role played by the Kurds in the war and what is happening with Turkey. To little avail. I did coem across this in The Age. I was also able to find this and this and this from an embedded American journalist from the New York Times.

The Kurds are helping the US. Will the Americans help the Kurds?

We come at this in a roundabout way.

This gives us an insight into the reaction of Kurds to what is happening in the war. This gives an insight into the Kurds relationship with Turkey. The Manifesto of the Kurdish people calls for the Kurdish nation to have its independent state.

The establishment of Kurdistan will be a test of the Anglo-American commitment to bringing democracy to the Middle East. But all indications are that they wil oppose it to appease Turkey.

The Kurds see themselves as trying to turn back their forced march into the abyss of history.They despair about the opposition to the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Their reading of history is that the Kurds have often found that world opinion has always sided with our implacable foes in the sport called the slaughter of the Kurds. And this article is about a freedom loving Kurd encountering a lecture given by a US neo-con, one Paul Wolfowitz, the second in command at the Department of Defense, in Instanbul in the middle of 2002. And the lecture is not what you think it is. Kani says:

"The operative word in his lecture was expediency. He conveniently forgave the Turks for their past and ongoing sins -- the man thinks highly of himself and forgives as well as consigns entire peoples to pedestals or oblivions as he sees fit -- and hailed them as paragons of virtue, freedom, and democracy. Such pandering or begging is rare in the annals of human history. When one runs into it, it is usually in the form of a modest address from the representative of a weak nation to a great one for need out of desperation. In Istanbul, it was America that stooped before Turkey."

And the Turkish state enforces a repressive monocultural nationalism that is deeply hostile to multiculturalism or a federal state. Kania says:

"In Turkey, the tyranny of Turks over Kurds is absolute, unequivocal and abominable. 20 million Kurds have to, on the pain of death sometimes, call themselves Turks. Article 66 of the Turkish constitution has assured them of their Turkish-ness by dictate -- notwithstanding the obvious observation of many that the Kurds have nothing in common with the Asiatic Turks of Mongolia -- physically, linguistically, and temperamentally. The Kurds, an indigenous people of the Middle East, have to forgo their language and culture as well, Article 3 of the Turkish constitution dictates it, “The language of the country is Turkish and there can be no changes made to this article.”

It is highly unlikely that the Americans will push for regime change in Turkey.

After that roundabout? Will the Americans help the Kurds? No.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:08 AM | Comments (1)

April 1, 2003

War crowd not looking good

Well. What can we say to the PM"s current view that the war with Iraq is going to a longer war than anticipated he'd anticipated. He cannot say that its going to plan.

The PM could of course say that his Govt. got it badly wrong. That it had no policy. That it just trusted the Americans about the dash for Baghdad based on airpower winning the war in a week or so. That shock and awe strategy of the neo-cons failed to clobber Iraq into surrendering.

Its close on two weeks now and the Anglo-Americans still have not been able to secure Basra in the Shi'ite south. That was supposed to be easy because they would welcome you with open arms. And there are not enough troops, the supply lines are vulnerable to the hit and run tactics of the Iraqi's, and the army is involved in a war of attrition. And it appears that Arab Muslim volunteers start streaming into the country to take up the fight. Basically, instead of just being angry and marching in their own countries because they decide that Saddam's actually making a fight of it and go to get in on the action.

It was a deeply flawed strategy. Admit that it was in public. Concede that you made a mistake.

And why is the war going to be longer and tougher than originally expected?

Well that centre of gravity that the ex-military types on ABC's 7.30 Report go about is Baghdad. The military have to be able to enter and secure Baghdad. Its a much tougher nut to crack than Basra: its larger, populated, more Sunni, angrier at the US for the days and nights of shock and awe bombing), defended by the Republican Guard, and is much more critical to the Iraqi regime's survival.

And how is the centre of gravity going to be taken? Well the high-tech scenario to bomb the the place back to the stone age and the people who live there. And if that doesn't work then the only option left is to drawn into urban warfare amidst the rubble -- a mega-Mogadishu.

And how is the Coalition of the Willing and Eager going to look when it gets bloodied in both a military and political sense? Are we really prepared to be seen as the invaders and occupiers? As the barbarians who were willing and eager to destroy an Arab civilization.

Its not looking good PM. The war is not going to end the way you said it would. The narrow objective of regime change wil be achieved but it wilk take some time and and trigger so many consequences that it's not a political victory victory at all.

Admit it PM. Your Govt. did not understand what you were getting Australia into when you signed up.

Why not cover your flank and arrange for the ABC's Kerry O'Brien to interview Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, on his blunders, failures and mistakes as a part of a show and tell honesty interview. I"m sure the ABC would oblige.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:46 PM | Comments (2)

Australia's foreign policy

This is a great post by Emmanual Goldstein from AirStrip One on the way foreign policy plays itself out in British politics.

Its core thesis makes sense for Australia. We find this in text's conclusion:

"The issue is Britain’s relationship with America, the rock around which all British politics eventually turns. Whether this has the power to rent apart the party in the same way that Europe tore apart the Tories remains to be seen."

Well, the rock around which all Australian foreign policy since WW2 has turned is our relationship with America. Currently, with the war in Iraq, it is tearing the Australian Labor Party apart. But not the Liberal Party.It is quite comfortable with a dependent foreign policy in which Australia's national interests are identical with those of the US.

And what if the Iraq war is being fought by the US as a proxy war for Isreal?That is the national and strategic interests of the US and Israel coincide? For this reasoning, see Michael Kinsley's What Bush Isn't Saying About Iraq;
Robert G. Kaiser's Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy; Mickey Kaus', The Likudnik Factor Plus..

Then read Justin Raimondo's, ON THE MIDDLE EAST ESCALATOR: This war is spreading fast

How come Australia is in the Middle East fighting for Israel's strategic interests? This are perfectly clear according to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who said yesterday

"... that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq. These are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve."

In a meeting with U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton yesterday, Sharon said that Israel was concerned about the security threat posed by Iran, and stressed that it was important to deal with Iran even while American attention was focused on Iraq.

Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials that he had no doubt America would attack Iraq, and that it would be necessary thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea."

Is it any wonder that the Australia's relationship with the US is tearing the Labor party apart. One should sorry for Simon Crean. It is not about poor leadership performance.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Assessing the war

How is the war going? What judgements can we make now, even though we know that it will be eventually be won by the Anglo-American military. And what will the impact of the war be on the region?

Well the media are begining to take their watch dog seriously. They need to. Well, we should we say that it is the Guardian who is challenging the fictions circulated by the technocratic Enlightenment's war-machine.

This article explores the western media's frustrations with the US briefings at Central Command headquarters in Quatar, where Gen. Tommy R. Franks is overseeing the conduct of the war. There officials insist there have been no surprises, no adjustments, no supply problems and that the war is going just as they envisioned. The big US media are begining to pack up. They were promised that the media centre at Central Command was the place to get the big strategic picture, constructed from all the little pieces of information from commanders in the field and reporters assigned to military units. But the militarized Enlightenment fails to deliver on its promise to represent the truth. All that is given are brief video snapshots of the effect of precision weapons and long discursions on why information is not available.

For an alternative view to theTommy Franks 'everything is on track' view can be obtained from the latest post on this site,, which is based on Russian intelligence, gives an assessment of the high tech-war against a low tech country so far.

It also tackles several high tech myths of war. Myth I is about the precision-guided weapons as the determining factor in modern warfare, weapons that allow to achieve strategic superiority without direct contact with the enemy. Myth 2 is the superiority of the most modern weapons and inability of older-generation weapons to counteract the latest systems.

It also says that two mistakes have been made by the US command during the planning stages of this war: the US has underestimated the enemy and the
coalition force were clearly insufficient for a such a large-scale operation.

The Russians say only two mistakes. The Israelis are far less kind. They list seven.

These are reasonable asessments. Of course the war also has a political dimension fought out in terms of meaning and images. And the judgements there? This reportposes the issue nicely:

'In the allies’ Central Command HQ in Doha, they produce images to show the precision of Western bombing and the rapidity of the US push on Iraq. Walk down the road and the studios of Al-Jazeera are pumping out images of a Third World country trying vainly to fight back against a hyperpower of infinite technological superiority. There is no doubt which version most of the world believes. Even in India, where anti-Muslim feelings lie close to the surface, you don’t meet a single person who thinks this is anything other than an American enterprise fought for selfish reasons. “Why,” they ask you in genuinely concerned terms, “is Blair going along with it?”'

It says that in terms of post-Iraq Democracy in the Middle East should not be understood to presuppose pro-Americanism. Just the opposite. It then ads:

"If that is what Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney believe then they are fooling themselves, never mind anyone else. When this war is over, Washington will be faced by a single demand throughout the Middle East, including many in Iraq itself, at least among the Shiites. And that is to get out of the region as quickly as possible. And they mean weeks, not months never mind the years that the Pentagon is talking about. Whatever it may seem to Iraqis, a continuing military presence by the Americans will be seen by its neighbors as a US occupation, with all the instability and invitation to terrorism that it this will invite. Yet a prolonged occupation is seen as necessary by Washington as the only means of ensuring order in Iraq and keeping it as a unitary state."

And the assessements that go more broadly than the war itself and look at international relations? This article's political and strategic interpretation of the Iraqi war argues the case for the Iraqi war being a world hsitorical event. It says that:

"...the war on Iraq ­ despite its significance militarily, strategically and where global energy is concerned ­ was nothing but a trigger for developments that have been in the making since the end of the Cold war and the emergence of today’s unipolar world. These developments resemble birth pains accompanying the birth of a new world order. And, as is well known, the usual midwife for such births is war."

It goes on to add that:

"The Middle East, in short, is set to inherit the role played by Europe for the last 50 years ­ that of the main area for global confrontation. Through the new doctrine of pre-emption it is trying out in Iraq, the United States will seek to alter regional balances of power to its advantage; other powers ­ mainly Europe ­ will resist this to the hilt, if only to avoid becoming American satellites."

It concludes with the judgement that:

"...the United States intends to stay in the Middle East for decades. This has nothing to do with George W. Bush being re-elected or not; America will stay in the region whether it were ruled by a Republican or a Democrat. At stake are American national interests in the Middle East....Israel’s Haaretz newspaper described what is going on in the Middle East as an “earthquake” ­ an apt description for an old world in its death throes and a new one about to come to light. "

Earthquake is a good image about what is happening in Iraq as it signifies aftershocks for a long time afterwards.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

On a lighter background note

Here is a bit of humor about financing the war on Iraq from The Arab News that is published in Saudi Arabia. It makes a welcome difference from the exclusive reliance on embedded Anglo-American sources of AM on Radio National. AM has an air of unreality about its commentary, as it shies away from looking at the war from the Arab side.

A cartoon from the same newspaper that captures the history of economic sanctions over the last decade. A minute by minute account of the war is provided by Sean Paul Kelly at the Agonist

This is a review of three books on the war and its consequences from the New York Review of Books. Here are some interesting quotes. The first one says that in the US:

"...the military is the only generously funded institution in American public life. Over recent decades just about every other form of discretionary public spending has been allowed to lag—for education and health care, for environmental and social programs, for parks, schools, libraries, museums, and symphony halls. Only the military seems able to squeeze from Congress funds for the newest, the most sophisticated, the most expensive, and the best of everything, in generous quantity and pretty much on demand."

And the second quote is about the The US conception of nation building Iraq. Controlling Iraq will require a major military presence and support structure —that is, a base, and what is being put into place is:

"...an arrangement which makes it clear that postwar Iraq will be under American military occupation until the President decides the time is ripe to return the country to Iraqi control. This is not a minor point; every Arab government has now been put on notice that the Americans are coming to stay....Feith promised only that the United States would stay "as long as required" and leave "as soon as possible." But Feith's colleague Marc Grossman, repeatedly pressed by the senators to fill in the blanks, at last conceded that the many tasks facing ORHA were going to take time— two years or more before control of the country could be surrendered entirely to a new Iraqi government."

This puts a question mark on Australia's claims that it is deeply engaged with the American and British governments in plans for postwar, post-conflict reconstruction; and that it will make a significant contribution to the reconstruction effort, including helping identify the best possible interim structures to ensure the quickest and most sustainable transfer of authority to the people of Iraq themselves. As Tony Blair found out on the weekend, the US are going to run Iraq themselves and they do not want the UN around.

The review article says that the government of Saudi Arabia intends to ask American forces to leave the kingdom. A defeated Iraq can be expected to provide a permanent base that would make it clear to other governments in the neighborhood—Iran's in particular—that American demands for an end to WMD programs or support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, are goign to backed by military muscle next door and that America is in for the long haul.

Does this mean that an American war to achieve its goals in Iraq will be only the first in a series of wars in the Middle East?The book review doesn't say. What it says is that:

"Iran remains a serious concern because of its across-the-board pursuit of WMD and Missile capabilities," because Iran is developing ballistic missiles which might reach the US mainland by 2015, and because of "Iran's support for terrorism"—all charges of the kind made against Iraq as justification for war."

It is likely that the Bush administration is planning to remove by force the legal government of Iran in order to end state support of terrorist organizations, and to transform the political landscape of the Middle East by introducing democracy of a kind friendly to the West.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:12 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack