Damien Cave, a New York Times reporter stationed in Baghdad whose veracity has been challenged a couple of times here, has a very good analytical piece in today's edition which is also full of enlightening local details. He makes an important point: many Iraqis are well-served by factionalism and are fighting to keep the government in Iraq as weak as possible.
American strategy for Sunni Arab areas — widely described as promising — may ultimately encourage sectarianism and undermine the democracy that American troops are meant to support.
Sunni Arab leaders, nearly all of whom have pulled out of Iraq’s government, say they have no choice but to remain in opposition. Their communities view Shiite power as illegitimate, so signing on to legislation like a new oil law is anathema.
Indeed, for many Iraqis, seeing the government actually work together — at a time when so many are invested in keeping it weak — would be cause for alarm, not celebration.
Now, where we may well part company with Mr. Cave. We believe the Bush administration has the same aim -- a weak government and, ultimately, a "client" state.
Robert Fisk writes in the Independent today that on the whole he doesn't think 9/11 was the result of a Bush conspiracy. He gives several reasons for this belief.
My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?
What he doesn't consider is this: many of the screw-ups have been quite deliberate.
Does Bush want a heavily Democratic population in one area in the South to prosper when the rest of the South, so heavily Republican, has begun to shift loyalties, or wouldn't it be better to fragment that Democratic vote when a storm offers that opportunity?
Does Bush want a decent drug plan for seniors and the disabled, or does he want huge new sources of guaranteed government subsidies to friendly pharmaceutical compananies?
Did Bush want Afghanistan and Iraq to become strong, independent, self-determining states, or did he want them to become fiefdoms of American corporations?
Did Bush want a peaceful, secure, and self-determining American democracy, or did he want a frightened, dependent, security-conscious authoritarian state, replaying 9/11 at every opportunity and willing to authorize war, surveillance, budget overruns, and a secret, authoritarian administration?
Does he want an America whose position in the world is so secure it doesn't need a vast defense establishment, a growing mercenary "security" capability? Or does he welcome the prospect of calls, in the face of the toll Iraq has taken on military manpower and materiel, for a greatly increased military budget, a larger military, and more opportunities for private contractors?
As for Iraq: the president didn't know about Sunnis and Shiites. Who cares! Minor matter! Internal divisions are in the interest of this administration -- abroad and at home. And we, no less than the Iraqis, have obliged.
As for Fisk, he ends with the admission that, like many of us, he's an agnostic.
Like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us.
