A Million Little Colin Powells
On March 22, during a speech on Iraq in West Virginia, the President fielded a question about how "we" can balance the media's grim treatment of the war. He responded thusly: "I just got to keep talking. And one of the -- there's word of mouth, there's blogs, there's Internet, there's all kinds of ways to communicate which is literally changing the way people are getting their information. And so if you're concerned, I would suggest that you reach out to some of the groups that are supporting the troops, that have got Internet sites, and just keep the word -- keep the word moving.”
Bush's suggestion coincides with Congressman Pete Hoekstra's (R-MI) successful bid to release onto the internet thousands of documents captured in Iraq. As Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Hoekstra had been trying for weeks to get Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte to release the documents. Negroponte, not wanting a horde of recreational lay-persons drawing inappropriate conclusions, relented only after Hoekstra introduced a bill to force the release.
The documents themselves are from Operations Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. They include 48,000 boxes and span over 3,000 hours of recorded conversation. Although everything received at least a cursory analysis from intelligence officials, the vast bulk has not been classified in any particular way and remains untranslated.
Coming from Bush and Hoekstra, such boundless faith in the power of the people to properly interpret Arabic documents from the Iraqi regime is stirring, but we ought to remember the context in which this web-based populism is set. Iraq is already in the midst of something like a civil war (though Donald Rumsfeld will no doubt refrain from calling it one until a rival republic declares itself). The Administration, unable to prevent civil war, knows that the only thing forestalling the complete collapse of public support is their ability to hide the fact. That’s where pro-war blogs and an avalanche of random paperwork come in. Tenuous links made by anonymous bloggers can remind people why the United States invaded Iraq, and why it must see the mission through to completion. And with no oversight, the all-important will-to-believe and Bush’s endorsement of the medium, information bleeding from mainstream sources may be safely ignored.
As the New York Times noted, Ray Robinson has already declared: “Saddam's W.M.D. and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!” And bear in mind that only 600 of the million or so documents have yet to be released. By the time Robinson has translated everything, who knows what tidbits will be found.
An increase in transparency and greater access to information is a good thing, but nothing is without context. Discharging tons of information onto the internet will provide neither a retroactive justification for the occupation of Iraq nor a surrogate for genuine public engagement. It will, however, offer shrill dissonance to the news coming out of Iraq. By dumping thousands and thousands of documents into the ether, the Administration explicitly seeks to dilute the debate through an avalanche of paperwork – a debate already darkened through a fog of fear. No longer a single, discredited voice holding up a vial, but a million.
Bush's suggestion coincides with Congressman Pete Hoekstra's (R-MI) successful bid to release onto the internet thousands of documents captured in Iraq. As Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Hoekstra had been trying for weeks to get Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte to release the documents. Negroponte, not wanting a horde of recreational lay-persons drawing inappropriate conclusions, relented only after Hoekstra introduced a bill to force the release.
The documents themselves are from Operations Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. They include 48,000 boxes and span over 3,000 hours of recorded conversation. Although everything received at least a cursory analysis from intelligence officials, the vast bulk has not been classified in any particular way and remains untranslated.
Coming from Bush and Hoekstra, such boundless faith in the power of the people to properly interpret Arabic documents from the Iraqi regime is stirring, but we ought to remember the context in which this web-based populism is set. Iraq is already in the midst of something like a civil war (though Donald Rumsfeld will no doubt refrain from calling it one until a rival republic declares itself). The Administration, unable to prevent civil war, knows that the only thing forestalling the complete collapse of public support is their ability to hide the fact. That’s where pro-war blogs and an avalanche of random paperwork come in. Tenuous links made by anonymous bloggers can remind people why the United States invaded Iraq, and why it must see the mission through to completion. And with no oversight, the all-important will-to-believe and Bush’s endorsement of the medium, information bleeding from mainstream sources may be safely ignored.
As the New York Times noted, Ray Robinson has already declared: “Saddam's W.M.D. and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!” And bear in mind that only 600 of the million or so documents have yet to be released. By the time Robinson has translated everything, who knows what tidbits will be found.
An increase in transparency and greater access to information is a good thing, but nothing is without context. Discharging tons of information onto the internet will provide neither a retroactive justification for the occupation of Iraq nor a surrogate for genuine public engagement. It will, however, offer shrill dissonance to the news coming out of Iraq. By dumping thousands and thousands of documents into the ether, the Administration explicitly seeks to dilute the debate through an avalanche of paperwork – a debate already darkened through a fog of fear. No longer a single, discredited voice holding up a vial, but a million.
4 Comments:
Editors, you say in this message that "Iraq is already in the midst of something like a civil war." But in the previous post you said "even now it is not clear that the country is engaged in a civil war." Stuff happens, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, etc., but really, am I the only one reading these things? And please stop carping at Kos. Aren't there more important things to worry about, like getting your own position straight?
The ambiguity that you rightly point out has, generally speaking, to do with the question of where anarchy ends and where civil war begins.
Note, for example, this short piece linked to on Andrew Sullivan's site: http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/03/even_wretchard_.html
It would seem from pieces like this (which abound) that Iraq is experiencing some form of anarchy.
Now witness Juan Cole's recent take on the issue, in which he leans toward David Singer's definition of civil war and concludes that "Iraq is incontestably in a civil war." http://www.juancole.com/2006/03/civil-war-what-civil-war-cole-in-salon.html
The ambiguity of the situation leads to the sometimes-variable emphasis within our posts. Proper civil war or anarchy? Insurgency? Or something else? (State-sponsored sectarian attacks on minority groups? See the Interior Ministry.) How should we weigh the magnitude of the struggle against the assessments of the forces and social movements involved?
Our basic position, that Iraq is spiralling out of control, that a benchmark of catastrophe-level strife has been passed, and that the occupation forces do not appeared positioned to help, is consistent.
Neither of the sentences pointed out definitively made the call either way, though we agree that they struck different chords of emphasis.
Possibly confusing, therefore, but not inconsistent. Whether that lets Kos off the hook, however, is an entirely different matter.
A "benchmark of catastrophe-level strife has been passed": well, that's certainly elevating the discussion to a level of abstraction, not to say obfuscation, where it becomes difficult to say whether Kos's allusion to "bloody sectarian strife" is relevant or not, since the parties to the "strife" have been abstracted out of existence. I take your point about Kos's careless formulation having something in common with condescending dismissals of non-Western cultures, but it seems a little brusque to assert that the thrust and parry of current violence owe more to the "US occupation [treating] the Iraqi population as sectarian blocs" than to the kinds of deep cultural cleavages to which Kos at least calls attention, however inadequately. Thanks for the Cole reference. As for the "civil war" question, I'm a realist, not a nominalist, so long as nothing is riding on the name. It is what it is. Call it a civil war or call it something else. The issue at hand is how to understand it, and to my mind the cultural strand, which Kos emphasizes, is as important as the military-political, which you favor. My suggestion was merely that it would be more enlightening for you to develop the theme of how US strategy has shaped the opposition than to carp at Kos, who I don't think intended to patronize the occupied or let the occupiers off the hook.
Goldie is right to be concerned with what is happening more than what it is called.
And what appears to be happening is that a loose alliance of native Sunni and Baathist elements together with foreign Sunni fanatics, on the one hand, and a loose alliance of Shia factions, on the other, are fighting a sectarian war against each other. This basic domestic position is complicated by at least four factors: 1) the active presence of a third native party to the conflict, the slightly tighter alliance of Kurdish factions with some de facto independence of the Iraqi entity 2) the external support for the different groups by regional players especially Iran and Syria 3) the uncertain and indecisive military and political influence of the occupiers 4)the active use by all the various domestic parties of the positions they can contol in the state institutions created by the occupiers to further their pursuit of the politico-military campaigns.
Civil wars were ever thus - complicated. The constant question posed by the media as to whether Iraq is about to slide into civil war misses the point. The future may hold more or less violence. The question is what is its cause and what its solution.
Here, whether carping or not, the editors are absolutely right not to let Kos's point pass without comment. The longstanding religious differences within the region once known as Mesopotamia only now take the particular form of sectarian warfare as a result of almost a century of interference by Britain, France and the USA. From setting up the artificial entity of Iraq in the first place, to helping Saddam to power, backing him in war against the Kurds and Shia Iran, to finally overthrowing him and occupying the country with no apparent idea what to do with it thereafter, everything that these foreign powers have done has served to divide the people of the region against one another.
Whatever the solution may be to the current violence, on this question, for anyone in the West, the principle must be 'first take the log from thine own eye'. Anything else is apologetics.
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