After a week where I filed blog entries every day, I've gone a
week now without posting anything. Two excuses: One is that I've
been waiting for the Village Voice to post my Jazz Consumer Guide,
so I can pass on the URL. The column is in the print edition, but
hasn't been posted. I'm told they're using some new software, and
having trouble with it. As a software engineer, that strikes me
as a particularly lame excuse. But even if some management twit
made a real dumb decision buying bad software, most times workers
can go in and fix those problems by hand. Another possibility is
that the Voice's labor problems (i.e., management problems) have
taken another step toward making the paper dysfunctional. Rumors
are that the Voice is up for sale. While the Voice has managed to
keep most of its political and cultural values through several
changes of ownership in the past, including a stretch under Rupert
Murdoch, one always worries that the end is just around the next
bend.
The other thing holding me up is that I've fallen behind in
getting September's Recycled Goods done, so that's what I've been
working on all week long. I should have that done later today,
and hope to build up some extras in the next week so I don't get
caught short next time like I did this time. I haven't made much
of an effort to line up Recycled records, but it's starting to
look like I might be running low, of good records, anyway.
Meanwhile, some news items:
Iraq's constitution was dead-on-arrival, if indeed it actually
ever arrived. This looks real bad for the political maturity of the
ruling coalition, but a big part of the problem is the one subject
that none of them dare talk about: the Bushist occupation. The one
thing that should be clear by now is that the only way anything gets
better in Iraq is for the war to end, and the only way that happens
is if the resistance becomes a stakeholder in the government. And
the only way that can happen is for the U.S. to establish that it
is leaving and will no longer interfere in Iraq's internal affairs.
That isn't something talked about in the polite circles of the Green
Zone, because Bush has a political stake in hanging on -- the "main
front of the War on Terror" -- and because most of the Iraqis in
power (such as it is) depend on the U.S. for protection. No doubt,
this won't be an easy discussion. But if Iraq doesn't become a big
enough tent for the resistance to join, it won't work for anyone.
(Q: What makes the Kurds think that there's a future in seizing the
oil fields near Kirkuk then seceding? How does Kurdistan get oil to
the markets? Through Sunni Iraq? Shi'a Iraq? Turkey? Iran? Syria?)
It's interesting that the only political figure in Iraq who seems
to have his finger on the pulse is Muqtada al-Sadr.
We're starting to see some movement among pundits and even
a few politicians toward leaving Iraq. A week ago Juan Cole made
a complex proposal, presented as something Congress might prevail
on Bush to do. It was based on an idea that I've toyed with: that
U.S. forces, unable to win in Iraq, at least might be useful to
prevent any other faction from winning, thereby enforcing stalemate
that would encourage Iraqis to negotiate their own solution. This
proposal was shot down almost immediately by Gilbert Achar, writing
on Cole's own blog. The problem with this type of proposal (Cole's,
or mine) is that Bush can't be neutral, and even if he did try to
change his stripes and try to be neutral, nobody would believe him.
Achar cited a piece by Andrew Bacevich in the
Washington
Post arguing that the U.S. has done all it can do in Iraq, so
should haul out the "Mission Accomplished" banner and head home.
Indeed, he argues the U.S. had done all it could do when the banner
first appeared, and that the only thing that's happened since then
was tragedy pursuing a pipe dream. The notion that the U.S. is
incapable of making things better in Iraq has been a tough one
for Americans to grasp, but some are starting to get there. At last
one Senator (Feingold) has come out for a fixed time table to get
out of Iraq. More will follow.
Meanwhile, Bush's polls have continued to fall. His fear of
Cindy Sheehan seems to have driven him to take a vacation from his
vacation. With Texas inundated by antiwar moms, Bush fled to Utah
to try to find war supporters. When he was met by 2000 protestors
there, including some sharp words from Salt Lake City's mayor, he
retreated to Idaho. I know some folks in Idaho he wouldn't want to
talk to either, but they didn't get a crack at him. If he can't
even hold Texas, what makes him think he can stay any course in
Iraq?
The American Legion not only rallied around Bush. They came
out attacking war protestors as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The local rant lines have lately turned in the same direction, so
most likely there's some marching orders or "talking points" out of
the Bush camp prodding this kind of hate on. There hasn't been much
of this up to recently -- at least compared to what we went through
in early Vietnam days -- but it's a sign that things are going to get
nasty. It is, of course, ludicrous to think that jihadis in Anwar are
following the peace groups scattered across America for inspiration
and hope. But this sets us at each other's throats in a culture war
much like Vietnam did. The right figures they won the last one, so
they're safe this time too. The antiwar left's increasing tendency
to argue on the basis of what the war does to America's soldiers has
the risk of narrowing the debate way too far. Not that there's any
hope that Americans will respond to what the war is doing to Iraqis --
even the ones who've decided they love Iraqis as much as fetuses. No
point trying to get all liberal over this. But the effect on America
goes way beyond what's the war has done to the soldiers.
Big breaking story: the hurricane that threatens to eat New
Orleans. We'll know more tomorrow. As I've said before, I think
disaster relief is going to be one of the big political issues in
America and the world over the next few decades. And nothing throws
this issue into the spotlight like disaster does. The $200 billion
plus we've blown up in Iraq might come handy here, but the bill
could well be higher: the worst-case scenarios are almost impossible
to imagine.
