The Knife's Edge and Who may Really be Sorry

There is an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to Bush Administration Policy. Or at least that analogy would be appropo if it didn't involve widescale death and destruction. Then that seems far too mild a description.

Forgive me if I ramble a bit. I don't want to go all Juan Cole, Billmon, or Brad DeLong here, but there is more to Attaturk in his real life than just smartass captioning. Not to reveal too much of my actual real-life but I have a bit of a background...so to speak...in International Political Theory (though I always sucked at the International Economics topics).

Now I'm no specialist in a relevant topic like Professor Cole; and certainly cannot talk economics like DeLong; or an experienced journalist like Billmon. But I feel fairly qualified to talk history and international relations theory -- or pornography, but that's another topic I guess isn't it? [Ed: A real Renaissance Man Obviously]

There is no doubt that the freeper brigade will cheer the outbreak of what they feel to be 'righteous killing' as, using their own vernacular, "they love that shit" even more than they love making making such witticisms as Moslems=Raghead; or the Pope likes it that Priests and Muslims love the butt-sex. Making your opponents (which means Democrats or those to whom the President or Rush says are their enemy) into untermenschen means that killin' em is just plain fun, especially when someone else is doing it and you are cheering them on from the sidelines.

So short-term the base gets happy and those who prefer action to what may be wise-inaction get a temporary fix.

But short-term, stop-gaps, almost invariably lead to long-term, intractable problems.

The Bushies might think it wise to put the Iraqi forces, ostensibly under their own flag, outfront in Najaf, between the Mahdi army and the Marines (sort of like Russian infantry at times during the desperate hours of the Second World War where they could choose between being shot by the Germans or their fellow Countrymen). But outside of the green zone, well even within it, we all know that Allawi is bound to the Americans just as we are bound to him. His actions are perceived as our actions -- because they are.

If Al-Sadr desires martyrdom, and if his forces holdout, it is hard to believe that the holiest shrine in the Shia faith will not be awash in blood -- cemeteries have already been desecrated which I am sure makes no one happy. A few select mortar rounds here and there (from one side or the other) and the short-term satisfaction of killing them by the dozens will lead to long-term shit sandwiches for our soldiers...and for you and me.

There are times when frankly brutality can be effective, but you have to be in the sort of state that can be brutal long-term and which others are not naturally going to form alliances against.

For example, many of the states in the Middle East are brutal dictatorships.

In the early 1980s how did the Assad family in Syria deal with its militants? It leveled an entire city, Hama, full of Shiia rebels. But the Assad family could keep up that repression because first, who is going to line up against them? No one. Second, does the Assad family succeed by being perceived as having higher aspirations than power? Nope.

If America wants to be a country of ideals, like most democracies, it doesn't do repression well. And thank god for that. Even the majority of the freepers don't want to become the OVERT repressors of the world. As much as I disdain the Bush Administration, even the Chimp, now that its an election year, wants to be the "Peace President". There is a reason for that, and its more than just semantics.

McKinley era scholar, Bush Strategist, and sociopath, Karl Rove, undoubtedly has some thoughts of the American Occupation of the Philippines. He knows that it took the United States several years and tens of thousands of deaths -- brutal deaths -- to put down Aguinaldo's independence rebellion (that's right, early 20th Century America repressed independence in favor of our colonial interest ["Benevolent Assimilation Program", see Orwellian statements predated Orwell and the Soviet Era] and then nearly fifty years later trumpeted our benevolence in liberating the Philippines).

Many Americans don't know much about the American Occupation of the Philippines, likely because it impedes on our image of ourselves. But here is a taste:

During the war, torture was resorted to by American troops to obtain information and confessions. The water cure was given to those merely suspected of being rebels. Some were hanged by the thumbs, others were dragged by galloping horses, or fires lit beneath others while they were hanging.

Another form of torture was tying to a tree and then shooting the suspect through the legs. If a confession was not obtained, he was again shot, the day after. This went on until he confessed or eventually died.

Villages were burned, townfolks massacred and their possessions looted. In Samar and Batangas, Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith and General Franklin Bell, respectively, ordered the mass murders in answer to the mass resistance.

On the other hand, Filipino guerrillas chopped off the noses and ears of captured Americans in violation of Aguinaldo’s orders. There were reports that some Americans were buried alive by angry Filipino guerrillas. In other words, brutalities were perpetrated by both sides.

Sound a little familiar?

The brutalities in the Philippines were more severe than what has happened in Iraq. But dead is dead, and so far more than 10,000 Iraqis are dead, many civilians, and they are NOT happy with us to say the least. Even most of the Freepers don't have the stomach to go at it in Iraq like we did in the Philippines, even the corporate media -- sans FoxNews Morning Crew and the NY Post perhaps -- will not go for that.

But we are now on the cusp of that decision, and while in the short-term "kicking ass" may be enjoyable from half-a-world away, being slowly bled and trying to trample down problem after problem is not.

The slightest error in Najaf could unleash a powderkeg of problems, including most dangerously a Shiite secession, followed inevitably by a Kurdish one; followed by Iran and Turkey getting more actively involved to encourage the former and repress the latter. And, of course, more death, always more and more death.

But back to the analogies given above and comparing the relative differences in American in 1900, Syria in 1982, and America NOW!

The strong-armed, repression of the Philippines by the United States was hardly qualitatively different than what Spain had been attempting to do, its just the the United States was more capable of doing so. The United States actions also took place in a different world of imperialism, while the United States got into the game late, its actions in the Philippines were not greatly different than how most imperial states operated.

In addition, the United States, while an industrial power most certainly by 1900, was not perceived by the European states as being central to its dispute for power. All the United States did is topple Spain from the last vestiges of its long-lost glory by taking the distant Philippines and America's neighbor Cuba.

But now, the dynamics are different.

At the dawn of the 20th Century when the various imperial families picked up and divided the "balance system" of the Congress of Vienna (so well used by the now departed Bismarck) and focused most all of their concern upon the actions of their neighbors and creating and dividing new antagonisms. France and England buried the hatchet, while England and Germany made one. Nobody really gave a damn in Europe about America's limited imperialism.

But a century later, there is no balance of power anymore.

International politics is no longer predicated upon the Five major European States which lasted a century after the Congress of Vienna; to a period of readjustment; to a bi-polar world which lasted a half-century.

But now?

There is America; America's Friends; those that generally get out of the way of America; and mostly non-state "evildoers" in the George Bush parlance.

But this world, clearly to America's benefit, lasts only so long as the United States is seen as both deserving and capable of such a pinnacle. More than any time in history we live in a uni-polar world, by hook or crook we have become the imperial power. There is every reason to believe that the more the United States exerts its power overtly through the old means, militarily, in an unpopular way internationally, the likelier that some aggregate of lesser powers will come to opposed American interests. This would obviously cause things to become more dangerous and less beneficial to American power. There is no reason to poke the rest of the world with a sharp-stick if you don't need to. Why create a world where you foolishly whack at a hornet's nest and then bemoan the fact you have to take action to keep the hornets from stinging at you?

And in Najaf, there is a danger that we are engaged in one too many pokes.

Was that rambling enough?