An unfunny cosmic joke
This isn’t funny anymore. Actually, it ceased to be so quite a while ago.
After some 3,149 Iraqis were killed in June alone and 20,000 citizens of Baghdad — mostly the last tattered remains of the middle class — were driven out by militias during the last ten days of July, Chimpoleon takes stock of the situation:
And the security front is where there has been troubles. And it’s going to be up to the Maliki government, with U.S. help, to use the trained forces and eventually a trained police force to take care of those who are trying to foment sectarian violence.
Incredible. By standard scholarly definitions, there has been civil war in Iraq since 2004. And if democracy was “born quickly,” it was either stillborn or strangled in the cradle.
A few days ago, this entity that passes for a US President diagnosed the dramatic conditions a bit farther west:
[snip]
He returned to the theme later in the press conference: “One reason why the Palestinians still suffer is because there are militants who refuse to accept a Palestinian state based upon democratic principles.“
I cannot improve on Matt Yglesias’ comment:
Obviously that assumes he was aware of it in the first place. Another possibility is that his lips just mindlessly mouthed some staff-prepared script. If that sounds far-fetched, consider this:
A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.
Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam–to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”
Sorry, I don’t know how to properly comment on that. I just don’t.
What I do know, and what in fact any fool with a newspaper must know, is that the New Middle East ™ and adjacent areas are turning out less than stellar under the guiding hand of this monstrous man-child. Here’s Daniel Levy summing it up in Haaretz:
Oh, and Lebanon — that tiny place with the adorable “Cedar Revolution” which until a month ago was a showcase for the “domino theory of democracy” — has been reduced to a smoking crater whose hitherto pro-American PM now talks like a Hezbollah spokesman without a beard.
Bush and his regime are a cosmic joke. Yet it’s been a long time since laughter was even possible.
Update: God help us. See Fred Kaplan on the Killer Chimp’s most recent press conference. To make this individual POTUS was an insult to the entire human race.
Our local public radio station aired an interview with Galbraith this morning. He painted a very bleak picture of the situation there. The latest tactic of Bush supporters is to call anyone who has tells the truth about what is going on in that country “defeatocrats.” Galbraith said the only reason we aren’t pulling our troops out is because that would confirm that Bush’s policy and philosphy were wrong, and Bush doesn’t want to admit that. Galbraith said 5,000 more troops in Baghdad won’t make a difference. He said even with ten times that many troops, in the midst of a civil war, what what could they do? He debunked Bush’s claim that Iraqi’s went to the polls to elect a unity govenrment. He said that most people there don’t consider themselves Iraqis but identify themselves as Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Defeatocrat that he is, Galbraith pointed out that, in addition to destablizing the country, the US has strengthened Iran and hamstrung itself. In other words, he pretty much reiterated the points made in the Rawstory article you linked to.
I recall quite clearly Bush’s response to people who warned him that winning the peace and securing democracy would be difficult to establish in Iraq. He quipped, “I’m an optimist, not a pessimist.” Thank you, President Pangloss.
Comment by Gal — August 7, 2006 @ 11:02 pm
Exactly. And outside of big cities, there are also clans and tribes. With the breakdown of civic order, people will increasingly fall back on those.
Thanks for your update on Galbraith. I’ve always been a great fan of his late dad. I read recently that, when JFK was assassinated, his friend John Kenneth Galbraith was well on his way to persuade him to disengage from Vietnam! Now the son is following belatedly in his father’s footsteps in warning about a quagmire. Sadly the current Prez is dumber and more intransigent alive than JFK is dead.
BTW, if you ever doubted that a primer on economic history can be hilariously entertaining, try JKG’s The Age of Uncertainty. Also great: Economic, Peace, and Laughter.
Comment by Sirocco — August 7, 2006 @ 11:20 pm
My theory is that since Bush believes “democracy is God’s gift to humanity” and “democracies don’t start wars,” the fact that Hamas was elected causes him so much cognitive dissonance he has to block that fact out. Rather than re-examine his beliefs, he goes into denial. In light of Bush’s assessment that all Iraqis are Muslims, I’m beginning to wonder if he thinks all Americans are Christians without realizing not all Christians are the same?
Comment by Gal — August 8, 2006 @ 12:29 am