Scratching a Hitch. posted by Richard Seymour

Covering the Pachyderm

Back with another enterprise in the absurd, Christopher Hitchens tells Slate readers that we should not allow ourselves to describe Iraqis fighting the occupation as "rebels" or "insurgents". He quotes Jonathan Steele in The Guardian thus:

Deep in the marshes of the Euphrates, the town of 15,000 people was the first to rise against Saddam Hussein in the abortive intifada of 1991. Now it was holding the first genuine election in its history.

The poll was the latest in a series which this overwhelmingly Shia province has held in the past six weeks, and the results have been surprising. Seventeen towns have voted, and in almost every case secular independents and representatives of non-religious parties did better than the Islamists.

His observation?

[T]he article is a model of straight reportage that goes on to record that wives could vote at a time different from their husbands, that proceedings were orderly, and that the religious parties scored well but not that well. You will also notice that the word "intifada," or uprising, is used neutrally. So, which is the more convincing, and more revolutionary—a long line of first-time-ever voters or a few dozen fanatics with Kalashnikovs?

As long as the latter seek to negate the former, the coalition forces are not only right to repress so-called "insurgents" but delinquent if they do not do so.

If Christopher had been a war correspondent, as he wistfully wishes he were, he would have been well aware that it is the religious parties, namely those led by Ayatollah Sistani and Moqtada al-Sadr, who have been demanding elections: it is the United States that has been suppressing (or "negating") them. The latter are also "negating" the rights of Iraq's organised working class, in a continuation of Ba'athist policy . And, indeed, as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting points out, there is so far no sign that real power is to be transferred to Iraqis:

An article in the conservative London Telegraph (1/4/04) reported that "the Pentagon and CIA have told the White House that the organization will allow America to maintain control over the direction of the country as sovereignty is handed over." As intelligence expert John Pike observed, "if you are in control of the secret police in a country, then you don't really have to worry too much about who the local council appoints to collect the garbage."

The report also quoted former CIA counter-terror chief Vincent Cannis-traro comparing the planned security agency to the Phoenix Program of assassination used by U.S. forces in Southeast Asia. "They're clearly cooking up joint teams to do Phoenix-like things, like they did in Vietnam," he said, referring to the military program that killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese activists, mostly civilians.

Not content with making himself this ridiculous, Hitchens pours on yet more slapstick comedy:

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.

The United States government, then, is the modern moral equivalent to the FLN freedom fighters. Before you pass out from vomiting, cast your eye over that last line again. Savour it, assimilate it, make it yours. Christopher Hitchens is seriously suggesting that the Shi'ites in Iraq "showed no courage at all when there was real tyranny in the land". (The role of our modern day FLN in suppressing a truly courageous Shi'ite uprising is casually forgotten). To borrow a phrase that Hitchens is himself familiar with, I find I can't eat enough to vomit enough.

He ends his piece with a bit of eye-popping silliness:

I continue to be amazed at the way in which so many liberals repeat the discredited mantra of the CIA to the effect that Saddam Hussein's regime was so "secular" that it not only did not collaborate, but axiomatically could not have collaborated with Islamists. If you can imagine a Hitler-Stalin pact (which, admittedly, a lot of American leftists still cannot), you can probably imagine collusion between discrepant factions with common interests.

In any case, the Saddam regime was not as "secular" as all that. The campaign of extermination waged in northern Iraq by Saddam's army was titled "Anfal" after a verse in the Quran that supposedly licenses total war. The words "Allahu Akbar" were placed on the Iraqi flag after the defeat in Kuwait. The Baath Party became the open patron of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine ...

Now comes a document from the files of the Iraqi secret police, or Mukhabarat, dated March 28, 1992, and headed routinely, "In the Name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate." It is a straightforward listing of contacts and "assets," quite unsensational until it comes to the "Saudi front," where we find the name "Osama bin Ladin/he is well-known Saudi businessman, founder of Saudi opposition in Afghanistan, had connection with Syrian division." Of course, this is not a smoking gun.

Hussein pretending to be suddenly very pious must have been very amusing to the leaders of Iran, for example, or better yet to those Muslims inside and outside of Iraq who do believe and have hated his guts for years. And positing a "special relationship" between Hussein and bin Laden would be more impressive if bin Laden hadn't - even as he denounced the war on Iraq - called for Iraqis to overthrow their "socialist" leader. But what of this document? I have to assume it exists, although I can find no reference to it in any news site. And I have to assume, for the moment, that it is a genuine document, even though many of those that have turned up have proven to be false. (In one comedy episode, a Canadian journalist "found" documents linking bin Laden to Iraq in the Mukhabarat's bombed out offices, after "the CIA had already looked over the rubble and left." Astonishing how the world's finest intelligence agency failed to locate some simple documents which a little-known journalist was able to turn up just by digging through some rubble. Unless...) It is, first of all, not quite in line with such evidence as has already emerged. For instance, Osama bin Laden is known to have rebuffed Iraqi attempts at developing a relationship with him in the early nineties. So, if Hitchens is suggesting that the Al Qaeda leader was then an "asset" to Iraq, he is transparently wrong. And if he is suggesting that Iraq has been involved in terrorism against the United States, then he should explain this to the deputy head of the CIA, who told Paul Wolfowitz in 2001, "There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States."

Quite. The shoe is on the other foot: the US is now terrorising Iraq and Christopher Hitchens is its principal cheerleader.

NormBalls

Just a mini session today. Norman Geras offers an uequivocal denunciation of the behaviour of US and UK troops in Iraq:

The pictures of Iraqi prisoners being tormented and humiliated are appalling, as are the incidents (third item) they record. Appalling and inexcusable...

So far, so good:

...They are also a betrayal, by those responsible, of the aims of the Coalition in Iraq.

Ah well. We may as well stop asking questions now, then. Questions? Such as? Well, I was thinking that if the US needs to break the back of Iraqi resistance to their occupation, and this is one way of doing it, and it appears to have enjoyed considerable tolerance from military higher-ups... do you see where I'm going with this?