Semi-Daily Journal

Saddam Hussein was a despised murderer. There was never a chance the murderer would be back. Living in a hole, was not even surviving. Now, we have to provide for an elected government in Iraq as fast as conceivable and allow the Iraqis to build as they will.

A large majority of the deck of cards are gone. There is no chance the tyranny will assemble anew.

Lise -

That particular tyranny's particular leaders are gone.

I do hope you're not naive enough to believe in the bad people theory of tyranny, which says if all the bad people are removed, you have a pleasant and highly free society by a sort of default response.

The people of Iraq do not have security of person, the rule of law, or any political process in place which recognizes anything equivalent to the "Rights of Man". It's a long way from there to 'no chance of tyranny'.

Good news indeed, but it will have to be played carefully because Saddam will still be trying to create maximum disruption.

Reports of his cooperativeness suggest that he will be positioning himself in the way many Iraqis apparently thought of him all along: working for the CIA. Thus he's getting along just fine with his captors, talking like a little bird; reports like this help confirm the impression that he gets along just fine with the Americans. He would follow a similar line when he eventually gets put on trial too, if the court doesn't end up gagging him.

From his point of view it would be the best defense, and it would further divide Iraqis and Americans by reviving memories of the Iran war and Gulf War period and the subsequent sanctions. Reportedly, Iraqis widely blamed the US for the problems all three events caused them.

In my view, reports should be saying that they can't get a thing out of him, that he's totally defiant. They need to work very hard and very smart to make sure he doesn't tie himself to them.

I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but just what does building a democracy in Iraq mean? I have a sense that this administration believes that we have some Iraqis write a constitution and hold an election and poof there is a democracy. We tend to forget that our own history has been pretty messy, little things like slavery, the Civil War, segregation, etc. What makes anyone think that Iraq is going to be any different? Countries in South America frequently alter between Democratically elected governments and military dictatorships. Where has the United States been successful in establishing a long term, stable democratic government outside it own borders (and establishing it here took genocide of indigenous peoples). If the first elected government of Iraq declares Isreal to be the work of Satan and on Allah's shit list, what is the United States going to do? What if they declare a default on all debts and tell US and UK to get out and they are bringing in French engineers and Russian experts to assist in operating their oil industry? Will Bushy say no, these are the spoils of war for our businesses? Then he really is the imperialist that the Arabs fear. Putting Saddam on trial is a good thing. Executing him in the town square may even be a good thing (although I think life imprisonment is a better punishment for him). However, I do not think that Iraq is necessarily a safer place for United States interests today than two years ago.

Lise -

That particular tyranny's particular leaders are gone.

I do hope you're not naive enough to believe in the bad people theory of tyranny, which says if all the bad people are removed, you have a pleasant and highly free society by a sort of default response.

The people of Iraq do not have security of person, the rule of law, or any political process in place which recognizes anything equivalent to the "Rights of Man". It's a long way from there to 'no chance of tyranny'.

Lise -

That particular tyranny's particular leaders are gone.

I do hope you're not naive enough to believe in the bad people theory of tyranny, which says if all the bad people are removed, you have a pleasant and highly free society by a sort of default response.

The people of Iraq do not have security of person, the rule of law, or any political process in place which recognizes anything equivalent to the "Rights of Man". It's a long way from there to 'no chance of tyranny', and it's not a journey much advanced by corpse-piling conduct, howsoever well intentioned.

It will be interesting to see if the resistance actually does lose steam. If it has been primarily composed of Ba'athists fighting to bring Saddam back to power, then it may well diminish. If it has been broader and more chaotic, a product of basic Iraqi dislike for occupation as well as the intrinsic tensions of Iraqi society, then it may well continue as before. The reports I've read have described it as headless. There are so many arms caches and so many unemployed soldiers that in practical terms no leader is necessary. The basic imperative remains,in my view, for the Sunni's who were beneficiaries of Saddam. They stand to lose a lot in a democracy, what is to keep them from continuing to do their utmost to sabotage the process?

“Where has the United States been successful in establishing a long term, stable democratic government outside it own borders (and establishing it here took genocide of indigenous peoples).”

Well Japan for one, and Germany for another. And BTW the definition of genocide is:

The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

The American indigenous groups were certainly not exterminated. The 1990 census lists almost 2 million American Indians, and Eskimos. Moreover the population of this group has increased with every census since 1930. The Indian census data starts in 1840 at 44,021 and shows a decrease to 25, 731 by the 1850. This is a significant decrease over ten years, but I don’t think we can ascribe that to an attempt at genocide. There are many other reasons for a decrease, including counting errors, and disease. The next two censuses show a jump to 66,000 (1860) and 59,000 (1870). The Indian population then jumps to about a quarter million in the 1890 census. This is hardly a record of extermination. Can you produce historical evidence of a systematic and planned program of extermination? To use a word like “genocide” is to invite a comparison to the National Socialists in Germany who did attempt genocide and would have succeeded but for the intervention of the US. Had Germany succeeded in ruling Europe there would be zero Jews in Europe today. That’s what genocide means.

camille roy, I tend to agree that attacks are likely to continue, with whatever justification. How Iraqis not involved with them will react will depend on many things. I'd be surprised, though, if significant numbers of people don't say, in effect, you got what you came here for, now go home.

Zarkov, there should be between 20 and 60 million pre-colonization descendents today, depending on the degree of mixity we allow. That they are not here is proof enough. To be sure it was not the same kind of genocide, rather an ethnocide, still just take a look at where most live today: where "whites" did not want to live .

DSW

"...Different guys will be in charge...."

An unserious, but accurate, observation.

Nothing will be different, or better, unless or insofar as there is transformative change in what they are in charge of.

The notion that Saddam (or any other totalitarian "leader") was anything other than the very topmost bubble of froth is completely fatuous. Irreconcilable divisions within Iraqi society belched him forth and endowed him with all of his attitudes and standards--else had they, by equal chance, belched forth another, distinct only in unessentials.

Have we any reason to suppose that the various factions among the Iraqi people are any more willing to coexist today than they were last year, or in 1978?

Wake up, people. It is not as if you haven't had enough totalitarian regimes to study, whether or not at first hand. They are all the same: civil war pursued by other means; and while they often throw up charismatic spokesmen, those individuals originate nothing.

There is no reason to believe that elections can not be held quickly, and a constitution developed by the elected. Whether Iraq will be a secular democray as we would hope may be doubtful, but the war is over and Iraqis can build the country as they choose. There has been a complete end of the tyranny.

But a bad day in Pakistan, where Musharraf narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3318449.stm

"'When I came back from my tour of Sind and as I was going home from Chaklala (airbase) and we crossed the Ammar Chowk Bridge, there was an explosion just half a minute or one minute after we crossed,' Mr Musharraf told Pakistani television."

This is just one more evidence of the excellence of America's armed forces.

Of course the military stuff is not everything. Your local car dealer, electrician, and school teacher have to handle the real tough problems. Lets get started now.

Antoni, the big population die off in North and South America happened due to the spread of disease which developed across Europe/Africa/Asia. Whole civilizations were wiped out from disease long before Europeans would reach a particular area, as disease would outpace them. This happened back when the newcomers were running slave labor camps on the islands and had not done much in North America, by the way. It wasn't sinister handouts of smallpox blankets but the effects of a contigan on a population with no resistance.

So despite such activities as the trail of tears, you cannot just look at population then and now as "proof enough" without considering how those people died were reduced.

vsa (severely off topic)

Yes, different bad guys will be in charge.

This is good news, but it's not great news.

I don't think there has ever been much evidence that Saddam or the Baathists were behind the majority of the attacks on occupying forces.

On the other hand, the Shi'a now know that Saddam won't be able to do to them what he did to them when the US hung them out to dry after the last war. It's safe for them to go into insurrection mode.

Moreover it was notable that one of the groups celebrating the hardest was the Iraqi Communist party.

I find that amusing.

Good news? Sure. Great news. Not even close. In fact, fundamentally, this doesn't change much of anything on the ground. It's as likely to make things worse as it is to make things better (although at least it lessens US embarassment.)

“… there should be between 20 and 60 million pre-colonization descendents today … “

That’s interesting. What is the source of that calculation? It’s hard to believe that the pre-bronze age aborigines of North America would have grown to 60 million in some 200 years had the Old World not colonized the New World. The White population grew from about 3 million in 1790 to about 200 million in 1990, which is about 2.1% per year. This includes immigration, and of course all the benefits of agriculture, industrialization and medical advances. Are we to believe that the Indians would have developed all that in 200 years if left in an undisturbed state? Even if they did, a population of 60 million in 1990 would have required a population of 900,000 in 1790, which seems extremely high. So let’s say the Indians would have had growth rate of half that of Whites, about 1.1%. This would imply a 1790 population of 8 million. Do you really think there would have been 8 million Indians in 1790 if the Old World had had never come to the new world? I am skeptical.

Boy! Are we off topic or what?

I frequently see the argument (Jared Diamond, William McNeill) that various historical events can be adequately explained by plague. (McNeill explains the decline of the Mongols that way). But looking at their works, it doesn't seem that their theories are worked out in any detail, or that they have been subjected to criticism. I don't think that these theories can be simply accepted as true.

As for the 2 million "Native Americans" in the U.S., that's the number who claim one Native American ancestor. Since that Native American ancestor himself or herself might only have one Native American ancestor, we're talking about a very dilute gene pool indeed. In some cases Native American ancestry is claimed for sentimental or affirmative action reasons ("I am descended from a Cherokee princess" is an old joke in native American circles). By that logic my son counts as one Welsh-, one German-, one English-, on Dutch-, one Austrian-, one Swedish-, and one Irish-American, i.e. seven people.

As often in discussions with people who think of themselves as scientific (shouldn't be that way, but it is) we're now dealing with warring single-factor explanations. "What is the real cause?" The Sioux, for example, had already recovered from the smallpox plague by the time they were destroyed. They were defeated militarily because they were outgunned and outprovisioned, and they were destroyed because the buffalo were wiped out and they lost all their territory.

The Native American peoples east of the Mississippi before 1800 have almost all disappeared. In the West there are patches of survivors here and there. And then you have all the descendants of that Cherokee princess, getting the number up to two million.

I have also been assured that the Maya civilization was destroyed already by the time the Spaniards came along. Somehow the Spaniards had to kill the Mayan leaders, burn the Mayan books, and destroy their artifacts anyway, though.

This is all reactive to the "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" kind of stuff. Usually the argument ends up being "The colonizers didn't really kill the Indians, but if they had done so, that would have been OK anyway because, you know, that's history, and the Indians were bad guys anyway".

The American indigenous groups were certainly not exterminated. The 1990 census lists almost 2 million American Indians, and Eskimos. Moreover the population of this group has increased with every census since 1930. The Indian census data starts in 1840 at 44,021 and shows a decrease to 25, 731 by the 1850. This is a significant decrease over ten years, but I don’t think we can ascribe that to an attempt at genocide. There are many other reasons for a decrease, including counting errors, and disease. The next two censuses show a jump to 66,000 (1860) and 59,000 (1870). The Indian population then jumps to about a quarter million in the 1890 census. This is hardly a record of extermination. Can you produce historical evidence of a systematic and planned program of extermination? To use a word like “genocide” is to invite a comparison to the National Socialists in Germany who did attempt genocide and would have succeeded but for the intervention of the US. Had Germany succeeded in ruling Europe there would be zero Jews in Europe today. That’s what genocide means.

Posted by: A. Zarkov on December 14, 2003 01:10 PM

A. Zarkov, you have to be kidding? There were at least 2 million people in the U.S. and Canada when Colombus "discovered" the Americas. Old world diseases wiped out huge portions, but brigands in our employ exterminated entire people groups. We intentionally killed off the Buffalo and starved thousands more to death. Our settlers continually set up farmsteads in hunting grounds and on fallow year camp sites. When the natives who depended on those lands objected, we sent raiding parties to kill everyone men, women, children, and live stock.

The "trail of tears" was only one of many forced marches as we pressed westward. Our gift to our Revolutionary War allies in upper New York was to force them out and settle their lands. We forced totally educated and integrated natives to relocate to Oklahoma when gold was found on their land in Georgia, then we had an Oklahoma land rush when we found there was some worth to that land as well. The Mohicans weren't the only people group wiped out as we practiced "manifest destiny." If I remember correctly, a lone survivor from one of our West coast raids stumbled into San Francisco (?) at the turn of this century. There is every reason "to invite a comparison to the National Socialists in Germany." Their geopolitical project of "liebensraum" (sp?) was an attempt to emulate us!

Ian,

Just a thought - My guess all along has been that Iraq's Shi'ite population has been as well behaved as it has because its leaders (and the leaders of its Iranian allies) believe they will have the run of the place once occupying forces leave. Meanwhile, they are resisting through political means any development that is not favorable to majority rule. If my guess is correct, then there won't be a big Shia insurgency. They have what they need to run the place, as long as there are no institutional hitches put in their way.

"Where has the United States been successful in establishing a long term, stable democratic government outside it own borders (and establishing it here took genocide of indigenous peoples).”

Well Japan for one, and Germany for another"

Sorry, Zarkov. Both of those were functioning democracies long before we got there. Hitler was elected, after all. And the Japanese had a functioning parliamentary democracy since the 1880's, which had been manipulated by the Army to form the government we defeated in 1945.

History shown NO examples of democracies imposed by invaders.

A. Zarkov, the population increases for Indians you see from 1880 to 1890 are an artifact of the Census extending its reach, not population increase. Previous to 1890, the Indian Territory and Indians on reservations appear to have been excluded.

You can't seriously believe that the number of Indians within the territorial boundaries of the United States was that low, can you?