Friday, April 09, 2004
Naomi Klein's Conspiracy Theory
It appears as if Naomi Klein has spent too much time in Iraq and has developed a particularly virulent strain of conspiracy fever.
“At first, Mr. Bremer responded to Mr. al-Sadr's growing strength by ignoring him; now he is attempting to provoke him into all-out battle.
The trouble began when Mr. Bremer closed down Mr. al-Sadr's newspaper last week, sparking a wave of peaceful demonstrations. On Saturday, Mr. Bremer raised the stakes further by sending coalition forces to surround Mr. al-Sadr's house near Najaf and arrest his communications officer.
Predictably, the arrest sparked immediate demonstrations in Baghdad, which the Iraqi army responded to by opening fire and allegedly killing three people. It was these deaths that provoked yesterday's bloody demonstrations.
At the end of the day on Sunday, Mr. al-Sadr issued a statement calling on his supporters to stop staging demonstrations "because your enemy prefers terrorism and detests that way of expressing opinion" and instead urged them to employ unnamed "other ways" to resist the occupation, a statement many interpret as a call to arms.
On the surface, this chain of events is mystifying. With the so-called Sunni triangle in flames after the gruesome Fallujah attacks, why is Mr. Bremer pushing the comparatively calm Shia south into battle? Here's one possible answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is now creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible.
A continued occupation will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign trail, but not as bad as if the handover happens and the country erupts, an increasingly likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the legitimacy of the interim constitution and the U.S.-appointed government.
It's a plan that might make sense in meetings in Washington, but here in Baghdad it looks like pure madness. By sending the new Iraqi army to fire on the people it is supposed to be protecting, Mr. Bremer has destroyed what slim hope it had of gaining credibility with an already highly mistrustful population. On Sunday, before storming the unarmed demonstrators, the soldiers could be seen pulling on ski masks, so they wouldn't be recognized when they returned to their neighbourhoods.”
The supposition that Iraqi troops were ordered to fire on protestors by the Americans is categorically false. What were the Americans going to do? Kill the Iraqi soldiers with knowledge of such an order to keep them from talking. Klein, I hope, is not dumb enough to be saying this.
More plausibly, what she is saying is that in sending Iraqi troops to stop a protest, Bremer and company purposely fostered, the US knew that the shooting of protestors was a likely result and that, indeed, that is what they coveted.
Now, there is some evidence to suggest that the troops were shot at, but Klein could say that far from diminishing her argument such a possibility made the American plan all the more likely to succeed; what matters is the likelihood of the results and not whether the troops were provoked.
The problem with all of this is that what Klein is saying rests on the fanciful notion that what is happening now is exactly what the US wanted and that the reason they wanted such a rebellion was not so they could draw the rebels into an open fight -- the only half plausible reason for wanting it. Rather she believes that the Bushies were worried that the country may erupt if they stuck to the June 30th deadline and if the country erupted that this would call into question the legitimacy of IGC -- as if the current situation is not doing this anyway. They hoped that by fermenting a rebellion they would not need to stick to the June 30th deadline, which, by the way, only they support, and thus in the process avoid in June what is happening now. It is always best to get things over with. The fact that the legions of Bush haters the world around would feel that a decision to abandon the June 30th dateline is proof that Bush has great plans for a new American Empire, would never occur all those PhDs in Washington.
It appears as if Naomi Klein has spent too much time in Iraq and has developed a particularly virulent strain of conspiracy fever.
“At first, Mr. Bremer responded to Mr. al-Sadr's growing strength by ignoring him; now he is attempting to provoke him into all-out battle.
The trouble began when Mr. Bremer closed down Mr. al-Sadr's newspaper last week, sparking a wave of peaceful demonstrations. On Saturday, Mr. Bremer raised the stakes further by sending coalition forces to surround Mr. al-Sadr's house near Najaf and arrest his communications officer.
Predictably, the arrest sparked immediate demonstrations in Baghdad, which the Iraqi army responded to by opening fire and allegedly killing three people. It was these deaths that provoked yesterday's bloody demonstrations.
At the end of the day on Sunday, Mr. al-Sadr issued a statement calling on his supporters to stop staging demonstrations "because your enemy prefers terrorism and detests that way of expressing opinion" and instead urged them to employ unnamed "other ways" to resist the occupation, a statement many interpret as a call to arms.
On the surface, this chain of events is mystifying. With the so-called Sunni triangle in flames after the gruesome Fallujah attacks, why is Mr. Bremer pushing the comparatively calm Shia south into battle? Here's one possible answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is now creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible.
A continued occupation will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign trail, but not as bad as if the handover happens and the country erupts, an increasingly likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the legitimacy of the interim constitution and the U.S.-appointed government.
It's a plan that might make sense in meetings in Washington, but here in Baghdad it looks like pure madness. By sending the new Iraqi army to fire on the people it is supposed to be protecting, Mr. Bremer has destroyed what slim hope it had of gaining credibility with an already highly mistrustful population. On Sunday, before storming the unarmed demonstrators, the soldiers could be seen pulling on ski masks, so they wouldn't be recognized when they returned to their neighbourhoods.”
The supposition that Iraqi troops were ordered to fire on protestors by the Americans is categorically false. What were the Americans going to do? Kill the Iraqi soldiers with knowledge of such an order to keep them from talking. Klein, I hope, is not dumb enough to be saying this.
More plausibly, what she is saying is that in sending Iraqi troops to stop a protest, Bremer and company purposely fostered, the US knew that the shooting of protestors was a likely result and that, indeed, that is what they coveted.
Now, there is some evidence to suggest that the troops were shot at, but Klein could say that far from diminishing her argument such a possibility made the American plan all the more likely to succeed; what matters is the likelihood of the results and not whether the troops were provoked.
The problem with all of this is that what Klein is saying rests on the fanciful notion that what is happening now is exactly what the US wanted and that the reason they wanted such a rebellion was not so they could draw the rebels into an open fight -- the only half plausible reason for wanting it. Rather she believes that the Bushies were worried that the country may erupt if they stuck to the June 30th deadline and if the country erupted that this would call into question the legitimacy of IGC -- as if the current situation is not doing this anyway. They hoped that by fermenting a rebellion they would not need to stick to the June 30th deadline, which, by the way, only they support, and thus in the process avoid in June what is happening now. It is always best to get things over with. The fact that the legions of Bush haters the world around would feel that a decision to abandon the June 30th dateline is proof that Bush has great plans for a new American Empire, would never occur all those PhDs in Washington.
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