Desperately Seeking Similitude. posted by Richard Seymour

What is Iraq like, and what is it not like? The effort to locate suitable analogies to describe what is happening in Iraq is not merely, or necessarily, an attempt at understanding. Transparently, such homology as has been inferred has been adduced as an attempt to confer on Iraq the same emotive values as attended the original. So, for example, it is obvious enough why the anti-war Left in America would be eager to locate something of Vietnam in Iraq. Not merely, or even principally, because Vietnam was an insane and villainous attack on a country that killed millions, but because it involved the dreaded "quagmire". We may get bogged down, and our boys may be stuck there for decades. (Fine by General Myers ). The similarites are compelling for Robert Freeman at Common Dreams. According to William Greider in The Nation, the uprisings in Iraq resemble a "little Tet" . For the Libertarian Justin Raimondo , it is the language and lies of Vietnam that persist today.

What to make of such efforts? Since someone keeps yanking my pisser, demanding I do more stuff on Hitchens, let's have a look at his prefered juxtaposition. First of all, he does not accept a parallel with Vietnam, on the following grounds:

"[...] But I would like to say, will say in fact, that I don't think there is any fair comparison with the war in Vietnam. For one thing, I have been in Abu Ghraib prison myself. They were just finishing digging it out as one of the most revolting, evil excremental pits in the world last July when I saw it. Everyone knows what it was like a year ago. Everyone knows what it would be like if Muqtada al-Sadr was running it. This wasn't really the case with Vietnam. The difference really is, apart from about 100 other comparisons, the difference is in the nature of the enemy [...] what if I didn't know those pictures were from Iraq? If you ask me, well, does it change my opinion about the removal of Saddam Hussein or the need to defeat Jihadist, I would have to say no, and I would have to add that I would suspect anybody who was using pictures in that way, and was exploiting one's natural humanitarianism and revulsion at corruption in the chain of command."

(Christopher Hitchens, BBC Newsnight , 10th May, 2004).

Although this is perfectly eloquent and logical in its exposition, I maintain there is something suspect about this argument. First, because the nature of the enemy is not as different as he may like to pretend. He wonders, and fancies he knows, what would become of Abu Ghraib if al-Sadr got hold of it. The only way he will find out, however, is if full elections are allowed with a complete transfer of power under the dictation of Iraqis. But, at any rate, why does he imagine the post-war Vietnamese government refrained from the use of violence and oppression ? The tactics of the NLF were not quite as vile as those of the South Korean client-state, but they hardly conduced to a sanguine purview on the likely result of a Vietnamese success. The principle was not that one revered the anti-imperialist resistance, but that it was understood that the success of a rapacious imperial power would have incalculably wicked consequences for the region and the world. As it happened, the US loss in Vietnam severely restricted what it was able to get up to in the ensuing years. Here is Hitchens' preferred metaphor:

[...]Nobody should know this better than Lakhdar Brahimi, the current envoy of the United Nations and a lifetime member of the Algerian FLN. A few years ago, his party and his government were challenged by an extreme fundamentalist movement that actually won the first round of a general election but would probably not have permitted any subsequent one. In any event, the Algerian authorities announced that on no account would they surrender the country to the "insurgency" that followed. They showed themselves willing to kill on an unprecedented scale, employing measures that the U.S. Marines would never be permitted. Repulsive though many of the tactics were, I think the FLN was broadly right. Certainly, Algeria today is a far better society for the outcome, and so is the whole of North Africa and therefore Southern Europe. These are the stakes. It is impossible to lose sight of them for a moment and irresponsible to confer the noble title of rebel or revolutionary on those who showed no courage at all when there was a real tyranny in the land.

I have already noted the deviousness of that last sentence. If it refers to Sadr's men, Juan Cole has already pointed out that this particular group was set up under the nose of the Ba'athist tyranny and operated despite the dense network of spies working for Saddam. If it can be taken to mean the entire Resistance, then recall the battles of 1991. There are a good many heroes in Iraq - and, what is more, it is offensive and rather fat-headed to denounce anyone for lacking "courage" when the usual reward for such qualities under Saddam was death or torture. However, the analogy with Algeria merits serious consideration. It is odd that a national liberation force which removed a foreign occupation would be compared to the entry of excentric forces into a sovereign nation. It is rather penurious reasoning too, knowing what we know about the geo-strategic priorities of the United States at this conjuncture.

However, the conservative commentator Andrew Bacevich has a different use for the simile:

In Vietnam, intense fighting was concentrated in the countryside. South Vietnam's mountains and jungles offered communist guerrillas sanctuary, concealment and a base of operations. Major cities saw heavy combat only rarely, as during the famous 1968 Tet offensive.

In Iraq, the situation is the reverse

...

This is where the Algerian parallel becomes instructive. In the Algerian war for independence, which began in 1954 and lasted until 1962, cities also played a central role. Control of Algiers, the capital, was the war's primary bone of contention and, hence, the site of the bitter struggle that pitted Algerian "terrorists" against the French "forces of order."

In their efforts to destroy the National Liberation Front, French authorities found that conventional tactics did not work. To abide by the traditional law of war was to concede to the other side an enormous advantage. So, in their frustration, the French opted to fight a "dirty war," employing systematic torture, extrajudicial killings and their own brand of terrorism.

The effect was dramatic: French forces made impressive tactical gains, temporarily dismantled much of the resistance network and regained control of Algiers - at the cost of mobilizing the Algerian people against any possibility of continued French rule.

In fact, as Bacevich notes, this consideration is not the preserve of intellectuals viewing the battles from afar. It appears to be how many of those operating on the ground see themselves:

This process was brilliantly captured in Gillo Pontecorvo's recently re-released 1967 docudrama, "The Battle of Algiers." Last summer, perhaps to remind itself of the dangers of winning battles in ways that lose wars, the Pentagon screened Pontecorvo's film for Defense Department officials. But one wonders whether the lessons making their way into the field are the right ones.

In one of the film's most famous scenes, reporters question the hard-as-nails French commander, sent to clean up Algiers, about rumors of torture and assassination. We are just doing what you sent us to do, Col. Mathieu replies - quibbling about the methods that must be employed is rank hypocrisy.

[...]Asked about the punishments meted out for the Tigris River incident, an American soldier told the Post, "It's a little like the French colonel in 'The Battle of Algiers.' ... You're all complaining about the tactics I am using to win the war, but that's what I am doing - winning the war."

John Pilger, however, is apt to make comparisons with a whole host of imperial misadventures from the 20th Century. In these articles , he evokes both Vietnam and Kenya:

This is an old story; there have been many Iraqs, or what Blair calls "historic struggles" waged against "insurgents and terrorists". Take Kenya in the 1950s. The approved version is still cherished in the west - first popularised in the press, then in fiction and movies; and like Iraq, it is a lie. "The task to which we have set our minds," declared the governor of Kenya in 1955, "is to civilise a great mass of human beings who are in a very primitive moral and social state." The slaughter of thousands of nationalists, who were never called nationalists, was British government policy. The myth of the Kenyan uprising was that the Mau Mau brought "demonic terror" to the heroic white settlers. In fact, the Mau Mau killed just 32 Europeans, compared with the estimated 10,000 Kenyans killed by the British, who ran concentration camps where the conditions were so harsh that 402 inmates died in just one month. Torture, flogging and abuse of women and children were commonplace. "The special prisons," wrote the imperial historian V G Kiernan, "were probably as bad as any similar Nazi or Japanese establishments." None of this was reported. The "demonic terror" was all one way: black against white. The racist message was unmistakable.

It was the same in Vietnam. In 1969, the discovery of the American massacre in the village of My Lai was described on the cover of Newsweek as "An American tragedy", not a Vietnamese one. In fact, there were many massacres like My Lai, and almost none of them was reported at the time.

Indeed, there is an important sense in which Iraq is comparable to every other imperialist mission - and it is those aspects which John Pilger is emphasising. Self-interest smuggled into the ideological terrain under the veil of idealism, the demonisation of an apparently barbaric enemy, even where the civilised ones kill many more etc. However, if we want to learn anything about Iraq that isn't nose-bleedingly obvious except to the Sun reader, we had better make our analogies a little more specific than that. Bacevich's article is an excellent example of this.

Another helpful affinity is supplied by Charles Glass , the estimable Middle East commentator on the Left:

People cheered when the United States Marines marched into the capital. At last, someone would restore order, remove the thugs and murderers from the streets and force an end to the chaos. Then a new government arrested and tortured dissidents. The U.S. ordered the dissident’s outside backers, Syria and Iran, to stay away. Britain joined the U.S. in policing the streets. With Washington supporting the government and training its army, the opposition strategy meant removing the Americans and the British.

Syria and Iran helped the rebels. American soldiers shot and killed Shiite Muslims. American and British planes bombed their neighborhoods. Soon, the American embassy and the Marine headquarters were rubble. American and British civilians were taken hostage and displayed on television. Then, the American warships sailed away and took the Marines with them. The experiment in nation-building was over.

There is a certain wish-fulfillment in that tale, and it is as well to blunt it with Chomsky's observation that "[t]ypically, military occupations are quite successful, even by the most horrendous conquerors". Yes, the occupation of Iraq may continue to go down in flames. It may, in fact, slowly ameliorate itself, stamp out the opposition, repair the infrastructure and win the reluctant backing of Iraqis. There is good reason for doubting that, but it could happen.

For the neo-conservative Peter Brookes , Iraq is much more like Cambodia:

Building democracy abroad is a key element of American foreign policy - and a necessary tool in the War on Terror. Which is why last week's elections in far-off Cambodia offer a glimmer of hope to the whole world, especially Iraq.

Not that they were exactly pretty: Cambodia's fourth open elections since 1993 saw the same problems that had plagued the first three - including violence, intimidation and vote-buying.

...

Should Americans care about the health of democracy in Cambodia? Absolutely. Democracies bring peace and stability to a region and hope to its people. For instance, in mainland Southeast Asia, there are far too few democracies. (Thailand is the other.) A brutal military junta rules Burma, while repressive Communist regimes control Laos and Vietnam. A successful transition to democracy in Cambodia would serve as a beacon of freedom to its authoritarian neighbors. (Just as Iraq will serve as a democratic linchpin in the Middle East.)

It is only fair, and also instructive, to note that nowhere in his article does Brookes refer to the fact that what the United States actually did in Cambodia was support and successfully work toward the rescuscitation of the Khmer Rouge responsible for "the horrific Cambodian genocide" in which "Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge murdered or starved 2 million Cambodians - one in every four". If Iraq is indeed like Cambodia , we should expect the restoration of Saddam Hussein and his acolytes who will then divide into opposing factions and compete in "democratic elections" (with a little sprinkling of ultra-violence).

What is Iraq like? All of the above, I suppose. The underdetermination of theory by data allows for a surfeit of plausible comparisons and interpretations. It is striking, I suppose, that Christopher Hitchens settled for the least plausible one of the bunch. Myself? I think the situation in Iraq is exactly like when, in the 15th Century, Swiss peasant pikemen kicked the everloving shit out of the Burgundian cavalries called to the aid of the Habsburgs.