The Invisible Hand that Rocks the Cradle

What is a "Free Country?" In America that sort of depends on who you ask. According to Reagan-wannabe conservatives like Fred Thompson, a free country is a country that is "based upon the value of a market economy, and free people doing free things in a free society, unafraid to trade with their neighbors... based upon the notion that we don't tax and regulate our people to death." America isn't about "dividing up the pie and rich vs. poor and boss vs. employee and all that kinda stuff," it's about working together as members of one nation, "making the pie bigger and going out there and enjoying a free country."

There's no such thing as social class, we're all just Americans. The Invisible Hand sets all the tables, a rising tide raises all ships... that, the Reagan Economists tell us, is how American works. The Adam Smiths and Milton Friedmans of the world are always there to remind us how competition keeps prices low and values up, how private industry is the most creative and efficient force for progress in any society. They remind us that there's no such thing as "class struggle;" that America owes as much to its industrial elites as it does to the working class. After all, without the highly educated and skilled elites, there'd be no innovation, and without the working class, that innovation wouldn't get anywhere. It's all a symbiotic relationship: the investor class opens a factory and the working class... well, works. That's why the "private sector"--euphemism for the capitalist "Invisible Hand"--should take over for cumbersome government bureaucracies, because a strong economy requires a free and unregulated market. A strong economy means a rich country, and when the country gets rich, everyone wins.

Bullocks. That'll slide with the New England Yacht Club and the West Coast Yuppie Convention. Hell, it might even slide with the rags-to-riches self-hatred crowd. Most commonly it'll appeal to anyone who believes--or wants to believe--that nothing that happens to anyone in this world is anyone else's fault. But the majority of us who have actually lived in America's basement and seen the machinery the makes this country run know better, even if we can't fully explain why. Experience gives lie to the claim that the "free market" produces greater prosperity for everyone, or the mythology of individualism that drives most conservatives almost to the point of denying the existence of society in favor of "six billion sovereign souls."

The key thing to understand about economists (especially the Reagan-Bush variety) is that they believe that every man woman and child on Earth is, fundamentally, some sort of economic entity. Therefore, so the theory goes, if the economy is stronger, more money is being exchanged, and more economic activity means more benefits for all these little economic entities within the economy. Sounds good at face value, except that it has one really important flaw: people are not economic entities. People are social entities, and the economy--in any form--is one of the means of social interaction and exchange. Not all exchanges are economic in nature, and in fact some of the most important ones--in terms of familiar, emotional and spiritual relationships--have no economic value of any kind. More importantly, it means that what happens in society, or even small parts of society, can directly affect other members of that society in ways they are otherwise unable to control. An "economic entity" is theoretically limited only by its liabilities and should be able to perform according to its assets; there's no reason to assume that such failure to perform could have any other causes, like, say, discrimination or lack of opportunity. I mean, if some company refuses to hire you, it's not discrimination, it's because as an economic entity you have failed to adequately represent yourself as an asset in the competitive job market (easily fixed, it turns out: just check the box on the job application that says "Hispanic").

This misunderstanding is small, but in terms of the nature of capitalism it has one devastating consequence. You see, in capitalism, the purpose of economic entities in the Free Market is to make profit. Anything an entity does to help it make profit is termed "productivity" and anything it does that is unprofitable is "waste." The entity that is most productive--that turns the biggest profits overall--is the most successful, and has better access to new markets and commodities it can exploit in order to make more profit. In this system, all of these little entities are in direct competition, so the ones that are less productive are at risk of being squeezed out altogether by the ones who are not. Basically, the most productive entity is expected to be the most innovative, or the most efficient, or the most productive, or the most whatever.

It's not actually that different from the economic system used by, say, a pack of wolves or flesh-eating bacteria. It would work extremely well in a country inhabitted mostly by pack mules who had nothing better to do than work, eat and sleep. But humans live in societies, not barns, and "survival of the fittest" is not exactly a time-honored moral virtue. Nearly every one of the world's major religions and cultures has at least one moral concept in common: reciprocity, also known as "The Golden Rule that tells us that we should treat everyone else the way we want to be treated. This concept is so universal among humans because first imperative of a society is to protect itself and all of its members; each person individually devotes his or her resources when needed to help one struggling member of that society, because each understands that everyone else would do the same for them. They treat other peolpe well, because they want to be treated well. Same goes for the notion of justice: treat other people badly, and you will be treated badly. Profit is not the primary goal of a functional society, stability is. And because societies--and not markets--created states, governments and institutions, we now have things called laws and standards that tell us what a stable and functional society is supposed to look like. Through trial and error, human cultures have discovered that the most stable societies are the ones that treasure reciprocity: the strong help the weak, the weak become strong, the newly-strong help the newly-weak.

On the other hand, a dysfunctional society is one that has become unstable, with huge swaths of its population being cheated out of the resources controlled by their society, with other groups profiting hugely at their expense. Under this system, reciprocity is strictly voluntary: the strong exploit the weak and only help them if it happens to be in their own best interest. That, unfortunately, is where America is currently headed: Reaganomics is what happens when "Economics" is mistaken for a science and the needs of society are reduced to a materialistic zero-sum game. In the logic of neocon-utopianism, there's no such thing as "society," except insofar as The Leader needs to have a group of Followers. Anyone whose sole purpose in life is not to make profit can be--and should be--ignored and ridiculed; after all, productivity is important for a healthy economy, and the economiy is the only thing that matters to anyone. Too bad if you're too old and frail to remain productive; you should have squirreled away your money every day of your entire life so you could afford to retire. Too bad if you want to spend extra time with your kids; you should have hired a Nanny for that, at least then somebody would be (economically) productive. Too bad if you can't compete with the competition; you should have bought an education from an accredited university. Too bad if your city gets destroyed by a Hurricane and you wind up homeless; you should have bought flood insurance and a boat. Too bad if you get sick and can't afford medical treatment; you should have bought better coverage from your insurance company (oh wait, you don't have insurance? Sucks to be you!)

In the end, Reaganomics--like most strains of conservativism--boils down to a bizarre marriage of libertarianism and penny despotism. It was fueled and conceived by complete and utter contempt for humanity and a fanatical obsession with wealth and power. And maybe the scariest thing is that most conservatives assume that everyone else in the world thinks exactly like them, except for a small but vocal lunatic fringe that bullies weak-minded fools into pretending to agree with them. Even if the opposite turns out to be the case, in every situation when they are given power, they will continue to display complete antipathy for just about everything that we--both as human beings and as Americans--have ever loved or cherished.

To the conservative, I can only concede: like many people I despise being forced to do things I don't want to do just because someone else thinks it's important. But that's the tradeoff I get for living in a society that can also mobilize its collective power to save my ass when I run into something you can't handle. Quid pro quo: you contribute to the group, then you have the right to ask the group to help you. If you can't stand the idea of having to listen to your neighbors tell you how to live your life, then you have no business having neighbors. Take your money, take your market, go live in a cave and live by your own rules. As for the rest of us, we have to live together, which means like it or not, the Haves and the Have-Mores are expected to part with a bigger share of their profits so the Have-Nots can survive. It's not because it's the law, it's not because we (the Have-Nots) deserve it, and it's not because they owe us anything in particular. It's only because, as Americans, we would do it for them if the situation were reversed.

Yew will explowd in a few minutes

Brief update on this one. It turns out I'm not the only one who heard the "threat" broadcast to American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin... er… Straights of Hormuz this weekend and immediately thought "Prank Caller." Apparently the voice on the broadcast--whose "heavily accented English" sounds closer to Mr. Burns than farsi speaker--remains unidentified, but there's good reason to believe it was sent anonymously by someone in a remote location, broadcasting on the Bridge to Bridge channel without authorization: the fact that the voice sounds completely different from the Iranians who hailed the ship earlier, the lack of background noise from what is supposed to be a speedboat on the high seas, and just the overall stupidity of hailing a warship fifty times your size with a threat. The source was probably a heckler on a tanker somewhere (maybe one of the ships that appears on the horizon in the Pentagon video?) who heard U.S. warships warn off a bunch of small boats on the Bridge channel and decide to fuck with their heads.

In other news, President Bombsalot this week has once again demonstrated his endless capacity for cognitive dissonance:

In public, President Bush has been careful to reassure Israel and other allies that he still sees Iran as a threat, while not disavowing his administration's recent National Intelligence Estimate. That NIE, made public Dec. 3, embarrassed the administration by concluding that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003, which seemed to undermine years of bellicose rhetoric from Bush and other senior officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions. But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. "He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views" about Iran's nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.

I don't suppose this is particularly surprising seeing how "reality" has never been a particularly large component of Dubya's foreign policy. Well, for any of his policies come to think of it. What's worrisome is that although his "vision" for the world is based on menagerie of insipid fantasies, the bombs he drops on people because of those fantasies are all too real.

Maybe that radio heckler was onto something? Seems like we're basically just a few minutes away from Bush getting us all blown up.

Don't Call me Nigger

This is something I've had to get off my chest for a while. It's hard enough to be a black person in America without having to live with this, and let's face it, blackness in America can be pretty damn confusing. My problem is, with every fiber of my being, from the very bottom of my heart, I deeply hate niggers and nigger-culture. I hate this Afro-American memeplex that glorifies boisterous, ignorant, petty, hostile, small minded misogynists whose entire value structure consists of pussy, bling and greed. I hate lazy, selfish, narrow-minded good-for-nothings who complain how America is racist and unjust and then in the very same breath glorify crime and violence. And let's not split hairs here: a "nigga" is just a nigger who can't spell.

Most of all, though, I hate being compared to niggers--even implicitly--just because we happen to have the same skin color. Call me a "hater," I don't care; I hate them because they are making life miserable for me and every self-respecting black person in America.

You see, there is a fundamental difference between a nigger and a black person. This fact is seldom recognized in America, which is part of the reason why it's so damn confusing to be a black American. A "nigger" is, and always has been, a vessel that contains everything that has ever been negative and detestable about black people. When a white man calls me a nigger, he's calling me a stupid, lazy, worthless, inarticulate clown who will never amount to anything because I am genetically and fundamentally inferior to the entire human race. When a black man calls me a nigger, he's saying exactly the same thing.


You can distinguish a black person from a nigger easily enough, to paraphrase Asheru:

Black people are beautiful. Black people live lives as kings born to queens who never taught them what their reign means. Black people are learning, black people are building. Black people are finding their place at their own pace. Black people are having children, making symbolic unions with worthy women. Black people are the genitors of the dream soon to be deferred no more, the encore to our suffering from our elders' pain. Black people are destined reclaim our glory to continue our original story.

Now this distinction isn't always as clear as it should be, since many black people, myself included, occasionally loose their heads in a stressful moment and finds themselves behaving like niggers (we call this lapse of judgment a "nigger moment"). This makes it all the more confusing, because you can't always tell whether a black person truly is a nigger, or if he's just having a really shitty day. Even Bobby Seale--one of the righteous black men that ever lived--had an occasional nigger moment. A lot of black people these days are teetering on the edge of becoming full blown niggers; fortunately, we have no shortage of black people who can function as a social compass, letting us know what we should be aiming for.

For example: Mutulu Olugabala and Clayton Gavin from Dead Prez are black men. Samuel Jackson is a black man, Barrack Obama is a black man. Danny Glover and Denzel Washington are black men. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Junior, Huey P. Newman, Bob Marley and Thurgood Marshall were black men. Dorothy Dandridge, Billy Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald were black women. Michelle Nichols, Diana Ross, Queen Latifah and Oprah Winfrey are black women.

It's important to note that, apart from maybe Snoop Dog and Mystical, there are few famous niggers (Colin Powell and Conodoleeza Rice are house niggers, which is a related but slightly different phenomenon). Thug, Gangsta, Playa', Pimp... all of those are just sub-classes of Nigger. Gangsta rappers and some of their fans actually internalize these ideas, live their entire lives by them, scorn and ridicule anyone who doesn't; these, too, are niggers. Of course, most rappers and some actors make their money by pretending to act like niggers for the entertainment white people and other niggers. That's called "cooning," which can sometimes be kind of entertaining as long as it's never mistaken for reality. For example, Katt Williams and (until recently) Mo'Nique built an entire career around what are essentially modernized black minstrel characters. So did Flavor Flav, for that matter, especially after MTV picked him up and decided to give him a nigger-themed reality show. And I'm still trying to figure out how the cast of Soul PLane aka "Niggers: the Motion Picture" manage to find the will to live with themselves after that cinematic abomination. What's really tricky though--and sometimes depressing--is trying to figure out which hiphop stars and actors are cooning for money, and which ones are just niggers who don't know any better.

Beyond the cesspool of commercialism that passes for "urban culture," it's a bit less complicated. Look around your school, your neighborhood, your place of business. Chances are you know a lot of niggers, more than you would prefer to know (just one is too many). But if you're very fortunate, you might know an ever greater number of black people who are not niggers. Maybe you know a lot of black people who are honest, who are thoughtful, who work hard, who don't waste energy or money on stupid shit that no one care's about. Black people, unlike niggers, have pride in themselves, in their heritage, in their families and communities. They don't sit around and complain about injustice, they fight it. They don't bitch and moan that the system is broken, they change it. They don't demand respect from anyone, they earn it. You can always recognize a black person because his dignity is sacred to him, even if his dignity is all he's got left. A nigger doesn't give a damn about dignity; if he has any left, he'll sell it to the lowest bidder and next thing you know he's on BET.

Too many black people are content to act like niggers even though they have the power and the brains to be something more. Whether they know it or not, when they accept that label, they accept everything that comes with it: they admit to the world that the are worthless, shiftless, lazy, hostile and untrustworthy. It's not specifically anyone's fault; niggers are a symptom of poverty, of deprivation, of disillusionment, but most importantly, of hopelessness. But even recognizing that they are products of their environment, I still hate niggers for the same reason I hate white supremacists: because of the lies they spread about me, because of the false images they created in my name, and because of the label they've stamped on my forehead and expected me to wear whether I like it or not. I don't care what color your skin is, don't you dare call me "nigger" with a straight face.

Tonkin Mark-II

For starters, I'm not dead. Thanks for asking. Been a little busy trying to write a book.

But something made headlines around the world today that got my Conspiracy Senses tingling. Apparently, a "fleet" of Iranian high speed boats manuevered agressively in the presence of a bunch of American warships and for no apparent reason threatened to blow them all up. Bush goes on air calling this "provocative action" and, lo and behold, hops on a plane the very next day for a trip to Israel.

Now, normally I'm not one to get swept up into conspiracy theories. I'm quick to concede that alot of really weird things happen in this world that, if you didn't know better, would look as if someone planned them. But the timing of this just seemed really odd. Is it possible that President Bombsalot had the foresight to pull a Tonkin just before he boarded a plane to one of the most warlike countries on the face of the Earth? Surely his BFF Olmert would take that as face value, even if he thought it was fake, and the U.S. Corporate media--which so far has missed no opportunity to regurgitate Bushite propaganda on Iran--would be slow as hell to call him on it.

At first I thought I was just being paranoid, but then I saw this:


It comes in about the last thirty seconds of the tape where the video suddenly cuts away and goes to an audio clip, apparently from the bridge of the USS Hopper. Now, let's look past the fact mister "I'm coming for you... you are going to explode in a few minutes" has this weird sort of Midwestern accent that sounds like he's from Milkwaukee. Let's even look past the fact that he's talking in a growl like he's trying to disguise his voice. Let's even look past the fact that there's no logical reason for the audio to be so thoroughly disconnected from the video, seeing how the first part of the clip was shot from the bridge anyway. Let's look past all of these peculiarities and ask, "What is this?"


It doesn't look like warship to me. Doesn't even look like a motor torpedo boat. It looks a civilian speedboat with a couple of Yamaha outboard motors. It's not flying any flag, it has no visible markings, and if you watch the video you find that at least one of the other boats cruising around is painted black and grey. So what was it exactly that prompted Seaman Too-Busy-Shooting-Home-Movies-To-Report-To-My-Battle-Stations Jones to conclude that these were Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats?

Color me paranoid, but the more I chew on this the more it tastes like a sad Bush publicity stunt to sell yet another meaningless war that nobody really wants. It's a stunt that expects us to believe that the Iranian Military would be stupid enough to threaten--much less attack--three U.S. warships with a couple of unarmed speed boats. But then, the Bush Administration expects us to buy most of their other lies (the economy is strong, the Iraqis like being occupied, Chavez is a dictator and Musharraf isn't) no matter how ridiculous they appear, so I guess this one shouldn't be all that surprising. It's just history--and the Vietnam War--repeating itself.

Two Minute Hate

You've probably heard by now about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University by now. For one thing, how could an American university even think of inviting this evil madman hatemonger to open his Farsi-speaking mouth on American soil? Hatespeech isn't protected by the First Amendment! People who speak hate shouldn't be allowed to speak at all! Ahmadinejad is the reincarnation of Hitler, he's a monster, a and a tyrant. He's a hatemonger. He's a terrorist. He's also a dictator, a thug, a delusional anti-Semite, a terrorist, a hatemonger, a terrorist, a hatemonger, a terrorist, and he even personally executed over a thousand people and raped a bunch of women. He calls the holocaust a myth and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map. Of course, I've never seen him actually do any of those things, but they said it on CNN and FOX about eight million times. And FOX has never lied to me, so it must be true.

Why would Columbia University give a pulpit to a hatemonger terrorist who thinks Israel should be wiped off the map? What a terrible stupid idea! But Lee Bollinger made up for it by being the totally rational, honest, respectful and patriotic American we all know he is when he called Ahmadinejad a"petty and cruel dictator", told him he was "either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated." He even commented that Ahmadinejad didn't "have the intellectual courage to answer these questions... I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do."

Rest assured, the Federalist Paperboy gave Bollinger thunderous applause for opening up on the president of another country with a broadside that makes Bill O'Reilly look like Mr. Rogers. After all, Ahmadinejad is a hatemonger and a terrorist who denies the holocaust and says Israel should be wiped off the map. And you know he really did say that because CNN says he said that. (Well, sure he claims that that isn't what he said. But what does he know?)

And after Bollinger unloaded on the man with waves and waves of good-ole-American verbal muscle, how did Ahmadinejad--who denies the Holocaust and calls for Israel to be bombed off the map--respond?

"At the outset, I want to complain a bit on the person who read this political statement against me. In Iran, tradition requires that when we demand a person to invite us as a -- to be a speaker, we actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgment...

In many parts of his speech, there were many insults and claims that were incorrect, regretfully. Of course, I think that he was affected by the press, the media and the political sort of mainstream line that you read here, that goes against the very grain of the need for peace and stability in the world around us.

Nonetheless, I should not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment."

What an asshole! Respect? Who does he think he is to get invited to an American university and actually be respected by the very people who invited him? Maybe he should have thought of that before he drove the truck bomb into the Beirut barracks and blew up hundreds of American troops! You want to talk about insults? Mr. Ahmadinejad, you insult every man woman and child in America just by breathing our free American air!

But that's not even the end of it. Ahmadinejad--who denies World War-II and calls for Israel to be nuked off the map-- tries to convince everyone that he's not the crazy murderous genocidal lunatic we all know he is! Bollinger asked him a simple straightforward question: "Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel as a Jewish state?"

Ahmadinejad's answer:

"Blah blah blah Palestinians blah blah blah referendum blah blah blah Israel has abused them for sixty years."

How dare he!

Bollinger asked, "Why is your government providing aid to terrorists?"

What do you think that Ahmadinejad--who denies the moon landings and thinks Anna Nicole Smith should be wiped off the map--said?? Predictably, like all evil despotic liars, he changed the subject:

"If someone comes and explodes bombs around you, threatens your president, members of the administration, kills the members of the Senate or Congress, how would you treat them? Would you award them or would you name them a terrorist group? Well, it's clear. You would call them a terrorist."

You hear that? Ahmadinejad--who denies oxygen and calls for every man woman and child in America to be skull-fucked--just called Israel a terrorist! That ruthless petty childish thug just called Israel a terrorist! What kind of sick monster would even suggest such a horrible thing?!

But does he stop there? No, he goes even farther!

"We've been victims of terrorism ourselves, and it's regrettable that people who argue they're fighting terrorism, instead of supporting the Iranian people and nation, instead of fighting the terrorists that are attacking them, they're supporting the terrorists and then turn the fingers to us. This is most regrettable."

Yep, you heard it right! Ahmadinejad--who calls carbon based life forms a "myth" and says all women everywhere should be raped off the map-- has now called America a terrorist too! That evil lying terroristic terrorizer!

Of course, no Ahmadinejad speech would be complete without the man taking the opportunity to deny the holocaust, like we all know he does.

"I'm not saying that it didn't happen at all. This is not judgment that I'm passing here. I said in my second question, granted this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people? This is a serious question. They're two dimension..."

Look at that first statement. "I'm not saying. It didn't happen at all." There he goes again denying the holocaust! What a rotten terroristastical anti-Semite dweeb!

The absolute worst of Ahmadinejad moments? The top (bottom?) three were these gems (turds?) he heaped upon our poor unsuspected Columbia students. First of all:

If the root causes of 9/11 are examined properly -- why it happened, what caused it, what were the conditions that led to it, who truly was involved, who was really involved -- and put it all together to understand how to prevent the crisis in Iraq, fix the problem in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

Thereby denying 9/11 just like he denies the holocaust. What a lying evil terroristorifacious hatemonger!

I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs or are testing them, making them -- politically they are backward, retarded.

What an evil hatemongering terroristicatious liar! He just called George W. Bush backwards and retarded! Pay attention Ahmadinejerk, I'm only going to say this once: George W. Bush is not backwards!

And then Ahmadinejad--who denies my credit card applications and calls for the Klingons to be wiped off Uranus--followed up in rare form with the biggest load of bull ever:

I think that if the U.S. administration -- if the U.S. government puts aside some of its old behaviors, it can actually be a good friend for the Iranian people, for the Iranian nation.
For 28 years they've consistently threatened us, insulted us, prevented our scientific development, every day under one pretext or another. You all know Saddam the dictator was supported by the government of the United States and some Europeans countries in attacking Iran. And in -- he carried out an eight-year war, a criminal war. Over 200,000 Iranians were -- lost their lives. Over 600,000 Iranians were hurt as a result of a war. He used chemical weapons; thousands of Iranians were victims of chemical weapons that he used against us.

And since then, we've been under different propaganda sort of embargoes, economic sanctions, political sanctions. Why? Because we got rid of a dictator? Because we wanted the freedom and democracy that we got for ourselves? But we can't always tell. We think that if the U.S. government recognizes the rights of the Iranian people, respects all nations, and extends a hand of friendship with all Iranians, they too will see that Iranians will be one of its best friends.

I've never in my life seen such a heap of bullshit in my entire life. The U.S. and Iran being friends? That's simply impossible, immoral, incomprehensible, inconceivable. The United States of America is a free country populated by human beings, Iran is an evil dictatorship populated by evil Muslim dictatertots! We could never be "best friends" with that gang of terrorists, not after what they did to our boys at Pearl Harbor!

Death to Ahmadinejad! Death to Emmanuel Goldstein!

This concludes today's Two Minute Hate. We now continue your regularly scheduled program. Remember, Big Brother is watching.

The Surge is Working. We’re Kicking Ass. War is Peace.

Reflections on a Sick Puppet Show
What the hell kind of man did Diebold put into office? Everything he touches seems to blow up, fall apart, or otherwise disintegrate in a chorus of gnashing teeth. The Bush Effect seems to manifest in everything from the American economy to Wolf Blitzer’s manhood, and precious few things survive an encounter with this life-sucking black hole of a man who reaps misery and destruction everywhere he goes.

Seems somebody forgot to explain this fact to Shattar Abu Risha, who found out the hard way the price of making a Deal with the Dubya. The late puppet-warlord of the Anbar Salvation front was relatively unknown here in the United States, but was already a household name for Iraqis in Anbar Province (well, in the same sense that “Al Capone” is a household name for people in Chicago). But we also know that Dubya never meets in person with anyone who isn’t either in his pocket or somehow on board with his “vision” of the universe, so what exactly does that say about Abu Risha’s motives?

Well, before you answer that, what does everyone else say about Abu Risha?

According to Captain Martin Wohlgemuth:

“Sattar Abu Risha, a living legacy in his own right. He's probably better known as Lawrence of Arabia to the Americans. His legacy is what allowed this to happen in a lot of different places. And it’s happening in Amiriya, they've got freedom fighters. In Abu Ghraib, they’ve got some freedom fighters. And they all say it's generally because of that, because he was first one to really do it. The major sticking point is trying to get the government of Iraq to buy into groups of armed Sunnis so close to Baghdad.”

Yep, he’s the Uniter, the guy who brings all the freedom fighters together. Wonderful guy!

According to Yahoo news:

Abu Risha's killing — just 10 days after his meeting with Bush — dealt a blow to one of the few success stories in U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq. The tribal leader brought together Anbar sheiks into an alliance against extremists, after years of American failure to tame flash points such as Ramadi and fallujah.

I guess we’re lucky to have such a valuable ally.

Sort of. According to Time Magazine before his inevitable death:

So what sort of a deal could the U.S. strike? General Odierno, an Iraq veteran with a reputation for cold-eyed realism, has cited the military's partnership with formerly anti-American tribes in the restive Anbar promise. There, U.S. Marines have supported a coalition of tribes, known as the "Anbar Salvation Front," fighting al-Qaeda. The group's leader, Sheikh Sattar al-Risha, is ostensibly cooperating with the U.S. and Iraqi forces to drive out the foreign fighters who make up much al-Qaeda's ranks in Iraq. And since the alliance has been in effect, the number of attacks against U.S. forces in Anbar has halved.

But that's only part of the picture. Sheikh Sattar, whose tribe is notorious for highway banditry, is also building a personal militia, loyal not to the Iraqi government but only to him. Other tribes — even those who want no truck with terrorists — complain they are being forced to kowtow to him. Those who refuse risk being branded as friends of al-Qaeda and tossed in jail, or worse. In Baghdad, government delight at the Anbar Front's impact on al-Qaeda is tempered by concern that the Marines have unwittingly turned Sheikh Sattar into a warlord who will turn the province into his personal fiefdom.

Exactly the kind of person who deserves American tax dollars! Just ask Ali Suleiman from the Dulaim confederation (the largest tribal organization in Anbar), who described Abu Risha as a "traitor" who "sells his beliefs, his religion and his people for money," and suggested that Abu Risha is essentially a disaster-capitalist who specializes in highway robbery, oil smuggling, gun running, ransom kidnapping, blackmail... with a resume like this, Abu Risha might as well work for Halliburton.

Given his reputation, Sheikh/Warlord Abu Risha’s death is probably the least surprising thing that’s happened in Iraq in the past eighteen months. Almost as unsurprising is the fact that the Imperialist intelligentsia has already gone out of its way to blame it on Al Qaida. Apparently, the idea of America’s pet-gangster being bombed by his own men is an image that pokes too large a hole in the already-sinking ship of General Betrayus’ credibility. But then, when you think back to some of those one hundred and ninety thousand missing weapons the U.S. was supposed to give to the Iraqi Military... well, you get the idea.

And then the treasonous little kissass has the nerve to sit in front of congress and talk about the success of Dubya's "troop surge". How is this supposed to work, exactly? The Surge was supposed to create "breathing room" for the Iraqi Government to make adequate progress; instead, the al-Maliki Government met 7 out of 18 benchmarks. It was supposed to create room for a reconciliation process that could end (or at least reduce) sectarian violence; instead, the death toll has actually climbed every week since the Surge began. And for the icing on the cake: the most that General Betrayus has to show for the surge is having sold a bunch of weapons to a vicious Sunni gangster with delusions of grandeur, and even that dubious success has just come to a calamitous end.

Now the Iraqi People want our troops to leave (79% of them at last check), and wouldn't you know it, so do the American people in pretty much the same proportions. To most of us, it's plainly obvious what's going on here: Dubya's just gambled away our entire life savings at the blackjack table, and now he's about to bet the house and car. He says he's got a system now, he says he can turn it around with a couple more hands. Finally got a good deck, says Dubya, and tosses the car keys on the table.

No more bets, George. We've had enough for one century.

THEN WHAT???

Suppose one day Congress grew a pair and managed, somehow, to force Dubya to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq? Eight months go by, the C-140s and troop transports bring all of our brothers and sisters out of the desert and ship them back home, alive and well, to cheers and welcome relief of friends and families. Iraq now stands alone, out from the ineffable umbrella of the American war machine.

Then what? What will happen to the Iraqi people when U.S. troops leave? What will happen to the Iraqi Government? What will become of those good, freedom loving proto-Americans we tried so hard to liberate?


Collateral Damage
Well, for starters, ten thousand fewer Iraqis will be killed each month due to the lack of American counter-insurgency operations. As it stands now, somewhere in Iraq, civilians are fired on by U.S. troops at least six or seven times a day. And I'm not talking about celebrated "anti-terrorism" missions against Al Qaida members carrying bin Laden's picture in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other. Most of these involve apparently random acts of violence. For example, a seventeen year old catches a stray bullet when insurgents start a firefight with U.S. troops in a crowded neighborhood. Or a man walking home from work (if he's lucky enough to have a job) bumps into an American patrol doing door-to-door searches and is immediately gunned down by a jittery Private who thinks he saw a weapon. Or a journalist has her car shot up at a checkpoint when her car is mistaken for a vehicle-borne IED. Three hundred Iraqis loose their lives every day in this manner: more than insurgent car bombs and death squad murders combined.

American troops (generally speaking) don't kill civilians because they're bloodthirsty maniacs. They kill civilians because they're in an extremely cluttered environment, rich in both targets and non-combatants. If your patrol is taking fire from an apartment building full of insurgents, you drop two JDAMs on it and get fifty dead insurgents; if you bomb the wrong building, or if there were civilians living in that building, or if the bombs miss their target and blow up the apartment building next to it, or if the blast collapses another building, or even if the insurgents are only using a small part of the building unbeknownst to its other residents, then you end up with fifty dead insurgents and a hundred dead civilians. And it gets even worse in the aftermath, as residents flee the smoldering rubble of their demolished homes and end up running into the line of fire of frightened, angry American troops who don't really have a reason to make sure the person they're shooting at is actually holding a weapon.

Either way, the U.S. military has the kind of extreme firepower and combat training that even Iraq's saltiest insurgents could only dream about. It's a testament to the power of the Greatest Country on Earth™: America kills more people by accident than the Sunni insurgency is capable of killing on purpose (and a raging bull can do more damage to a china shop than a thief).


Terrorist Safe Haven
But what about those insurgents? If U.S. troops leave, what's to stop Al Qaida from taking over the entire country and turning it into a new Taliban State?

This raises another interesting question: how exactly is Al Qaida going to succeed where the Greatest Country on Earth™ failed?

The short answer is, they won't. The lack of U.S. troops means the gloves come off for Iraq's militias. In that case, the civil war no longer has a referee, and the various factions can finally stop tiptoeing around and get to the serious and messy business of slaughtering each other until somebody wins. Al Qaida in Iraq--which is connected to bin Laden's al Qaida in name only--is a very small but very powerful extremist Sunni group, mostly consisting of foreigners. It is therefore extremely unpopular, hated by Shi'ite militias and civilians, and even by the majority of Sunnis. The absence of U.S. troops would probably result in a power vacuum that would give the Mahdi Army an opening to grab power, Iraq will fall into a quasi-theocracy similar to Iran, and the regrouping Shi'ite militias will simply massacre Al Qaida in Iraq.

It won't be a terrorist safe haven. At worst, it'll become an ally of Iran for the first time since the Shah was overthrown. Whether this becomes a good or a bad thing depends entirely on the actions and policies of future American Presidents, whether they want to go on pretending Iran is an enemy of the United States, or whether they might actually bother talking to the Iranian Government instead of hiring dictators, mercenaries and terrorists to try and overthrow it by proxy.


Islamic Republic of Iraq
Which, of course, leads to even bigger questions: how will the Al Maliki Government survive without U.S. troops supporting it?

It won't. Hell, it probably won't survive even with American troops acting as a crutch. But a competent dictator is still preferable to an incompetent democracy; as one returning U.S. soldier put it, "Under Saddam, Iraq was ruled with an iron fist. Spend a few months there and you'll understand why." As far as rulers go, though, we could do worse than Al Sadr. At the very least, the man has popular support from a good chunk of the Iraqi People (Sunnis hate him, though) which makes him the closest thing Iraq has to a Thomas Jefferson. A really creepy, violent, abusive version of Thomas Jefferson.

The problem with the American Fantasy of exporting democracy is that, on the whole, Islamic society doesn't want American-style democracy. Don't take that the wrong way, they definitely do want democratic government (and sometimes they even get it, much to the chagrin of the Bush Administration). But Islam is so ingrained in the cultural background of the middle east that trying to create a secular democracy in Iraq is a little like trying to impose Communism on Wallstreet. A genuine Islamic democracy is about the best you can hope for, and only Iraqis really know how to make that work. Unfortunately for our beloved Washington Imperialists, the kind of Iraqis who know how to make a popular Islamic democracy work don't particularly like the American government, and have no intention of becoming the next colony of the American Empire.


Sons of Liberty?
But how can America, the Leader of the Free World™, turn its back on "moderate" Iraqis who hope for peace and democracy in their country? Aren't we selling them out to Islamofascism?

As if. Bush likes to make references to America's revolutionary war. That's appropriate in principle, but not in application. America, today, is playing the same role as the British did two hundred and forty years ago: an imperial force with the most powerful military on the planet. Iran, ironically, plays the role of the French, who (as we Americans have apparently chosen to forget) used the American Revolution as just another excuse to piss off the British and, in the process, totally saved our asses. And I know it sucks, but all things being equal that means Iraq's growing insurgency (generally speaking) plays the role of the Sons of Liberty that sent the British packing and eventually setup their own version of democracy, according to their own sensibilities and values. And maybe that's a history lesson for America too; after all, the soldiers who fought for our independence committed more than their fair share of atrocities that we, as a morally sensitive people, have now conditioned ourselves not to remember.

As for Al Qaida in Iraq... they're the Hessians. Whether or not the CIA is actually writing their paychecks is a question for another time.


To The Boats!
What if the Terrorists in Iraq, emboldened by the withdrawal from our troops, use Iraq as a base to attack America? What if, instead of fighting them there, we end up having to fight them here?

I, for one, would be damn impressed. For one thing, they already have a base to attack America (in Pakistan, one of our supposed allies) and haven't yet bothered to do so since they're too busy trying to take back Afghanistan. If Al Qaida is in any way powerful enough over Iraq and Afghanistan and attack American soil all at the same time, you might want to think about stocking up on bottled water and moving to a fortress in the mountains. On the other hand, terrorists don't actually need a "base" from which to launch attacks; a studio apartment in South Jersey will suffice for that. As for "fighting them here," I suppose it's entirely possible that Iraqi insurgents will board a grand armada of canoes, row across the Atlantic and start suicide bombing Manhattan in a continuation of sectarian violence (probably targeting the two thousand or so Iraqi Sunnis living there). Otherwise, though, the bulk of insurgent violence in Iraq has been Iraqis fighting American troops--or other Iraqis--for uniquely Iraqi reasons, not in the least of which is a unified hatred of occupation.

We'll never have to worry about "fighting them here" for reasons which really don't need to be explained. Terrorists may be sneaky, and even a little imaginative, but it takes an army -- a real army -- to actually invade a country with the aim of widespread destruction. Even so-called "low intensity conflicts" like where special forces teams infiltrate a small country bent on blowing something up requires a chain of logistics (ships, technology, intelligence, communications, supplies, operatives and political backing) that Al Qaida simply doesn't have. As it stands, no matter what happens to Iraq, the biggest terrorist threat in America is actually domestic terrorism: an American-born, home-grown terrorist with a uniquely American motive. On some level, you probably know this already; try thinking of six places in Kyoto Japan that would make really good targets for somebody with truck, some explosives, and a really bad mood. That's no easy task if you've never been to Kyoto or haven't lived there for many years. But most of us can think of a few places in our own neighborhoods that, really, could use a little extra security.


Our "Enemy" Iran
And what happens to Iraq once U.S. troops are no longer there to curtail Iranian influence? How will we prevent Iran from meddling in the affairs of the new country, whatever direction it begins to take?

Stupid question. What exactly prevents America from meddling? Or do we assume that Iran doesn't have a legitimate reason to "meddle" in Iraq's affairs? I don't make that assumption, because I and the rest of the world do not assume that Washington D.C. is the Capitol of the World. Iran has a foreign policy, just like the United States has a foreign policy. Though, I should say Iran's foreign policy with regards to Iraq is probably all the more pertinent and immediate. They do share a nine hundred mile border with Iraq, which means they're not only in a much better position to help, but they're also much more likely to be directly effected if Iraq blows itself up, which gives them a much bigger reason to help. After all, terrorists aren't going to swim across the Atlantic and start bombing Manhattan, but there isn't much to stop them from walking across the border and murdering intellectuals in Tehran.

Actually, though, it's a stupid question because Iran -- contrary to Corporate Media spin -- is not America's enemy. We have never been to war with Iran, nor have we ever been attacked by Iran. We did support Saddam Hussein (remember that brutal insane dictator we removed from power a couple years ago?) when he tried to conquer Iran in the 1980s, at which time we funded and supported Iraq, bombed a couple of Iranian warships, and even shot down an Iranian Air Liner for good measure. Probably the worst thing Iran ever did to the United States was point and laugh when Hezbollah bombed the army barracks in Beirut (apart from the hostage crisis, of course, but college students are the enemy of mankind anyway).

Iran, like Venezuela, has been branded as an enemy of America for one specific reason: because their leaders aren't especially friendly to the U.S. Government (in Chavez's case, specifically because Chavez doesn't like Bush). It's sort of a running vice with Imperialists to declare anyone who doesn't glowingly applaud their every word and deed is, somehow, an enemy of all mankind. We at least know the President of Iran is strongly hostile to the Israeli Government for a whole host of reasons. Yet Israel isn't part of America, or even an ally of America, which doesn't matter anyway since the President of Iran doesn't make foreign policy decisions.

And if this so-called enemy manages to spread its influence to Iraq and produce an Iranian-friendly state instead of an American-friendly state, what are the consequences for America? God forbid, we might actually have to treat Iranian like a country again, and not just some sort of gigantic street gang with seventy million hostages.


The End of Occupation
So what happens to Iraq once American troops leave? That, obviously, is up to the Iraqis. Iraq is not part of America; Iraqis did not hold a popular referendum to have their country annexed as a U.S. territory (and considering 80% of them want us gone, we all know how that vote would go). Iraq's problems are not Americas problems, and only Iraq is capable of solving them. If they go and ask their neighbors in Iran for help, that will be an Iraqi decision; if a handful of them get Iranian help and most Iraqis get pissed, then that becomes an Iraqi argument. If Iraq decides it wants an Islamic theocracy modeled on Saudi Arabia, then that becomes an Iraqi problem. But if Iraqis can't take control of their own destiny, what right does America have to make that decision for them?

Besides the fact that our occupation there is, so far, causing more harm than good. Condie Rice likes to talk about the "birth pains" of democracy in the middle east, even while Bush has his fist elbow deep in the birth canal trying to drag the baby out by his neck.