Bush war crimes: a sense of total impunity

Naomi Klein has tough words for Kerrycrats


"Lefts and progressives became deeply complicit in the dehumanization of Iraqis."

If you have a chance to catch this week's installment of David Barsamian's Alternative Radio, "Debacle in Iraq" featuring Canadian journalist Naomi Klein, do so.

President Bush has openly and blatantly underlined one of Klein's main points in remarks reported yesterday in the Washington Post:

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said .... "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

That particular point, of course, is that Bush now rules in a "culture of impunity," under the supercharged notion that you can commit horrible war crimes and pay nothing for them. Inside the smirky exterior, I can see Bush relishing the dictatorial triumph of his torture-is-okay November victory.

Careful readers of this weblog will recall that I endorsed Kerry myself. Please see Deep Blade's cooperative Kerry endorsement, There is a Choice from October 28. This group of environmentally-oriented bloggers tended towards the position that Klein attacked.

But while I accept what Klein is saying, I also defend the decision to endorse Kerry -- mainly on grounds that Klein herself emphasizes. That is, lacking any powerful anti-war movement, I saw a vote for Kerry -- despite Kerry's well-understood pro-war orientation -- as the only way to deny Bush the "sense of total impunity" that he now has.

From this perspective, I feel it is duplicitous for Klein to accuse us -- those of us who have been protesting from the beginning, at least -- of complicity in US crimes against Iraq. Still, it is totally fair for her to ask why that powerful anti-war movement was not present to influence the election in the first place. Activists (myself included) do need to accept collective responsibility on that level. Klein's talk does provide some additional speculation. Give it a listen.

Iraq election a ruse
Another area in which Naomi Klein gave deeply insightful remarks in this talk concerns the upcoming Iraqi election and the insistent US-driven process that has led up to it. A key web resource containing much of the background for her remarks is her article Baghdad Year Zero from the September 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine.

The election is a ruse. It is designed mainly to ensure the continuation of US authority over Iraq. Just to underscore, in the talk Klein describes how the US has used oil-for-food lists as the basis to register voters, and now pushes ahead with the election despite violence 100 times more serious than one year ago. Both of these rationale were used to diffuse the push one year ago for early elections by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and his followers. The US, with UN complicity, achieved a long delay while successfully inserting the puppet government at the end of June 2004. Klein argues that this process has been a major betrayal of the Iraqi people by the US and the UN, with facilitation of neoliberal economic transformation (i.e. looting of Iraq) not a small motivating factor.

So they are going ahead despite inability to recruit election workers, the need for a "driving ban" to reduce the possibility of car bombs, failure to determine or release polling locations, election lists without candidate names, and on and on. It's a mockery of democracy.

My thinking on this is that the empire is not going to allow independent control of Iraq by an Iran-sympathetic Islamist Shiite government led or controlled by Mullahs, is it? I ask, is there a chance the election might be subverted Bush/Allawi's way through shenanigans -- vote suppression, duplicating ballots, or gathering of votes from the diaspora (see this big pr release)?

The violence works in Bush's/Allawi's favor in this regard. A climate of fear is perfect for a Bush-led election. Remember that Bush and Company control the process.

Even if the Shiite "Unified Iraqi Coalition" ends up on top, it'll be really hard for them to take any real power, especially with respect to ordering the US military what it can do, where it should go, or that it should get out, for example. And Bush is willing to go to the mat. If resistance continues to look too bad and impossible to get Allawi over the top, they might put the thing off at the last minute to keep Allawi in there. If the Shiites don't like that, or when they find out they don't have the power they think they won, it'll get rough. I would be deeply saddened, but not surprised, if Bush took to flattening more cities when he feels he has to. He will not let go this thing that is so big and important in making the history he wants to make.