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a berlin blog |
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Tuesday, April 29, 2003 DetenteSteve and I are in peace talks (see below), and considering a possible surf session in Southern California. Also, I just saw on TV that Larry Lessig is staking his job on a bill to kill spam. Some of us at Radio Free Mike know Larry, and we wish him luck. His wife is due in August, so it would be a shame if he lost his job. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:29 AMMonday, April 28, 2003 Too Much of NothingYou can also now pre-order my book on Amazon. Hilarious. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:47 PMEvidence vs. ProofI didn't say "evidence" of a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam was coming out; I called it the first real proof. Evidence is what you bring to a courtroom before the verdict, and there's been evidence for years. The new papers from Baghdad's intelligence office are starting to close the case. Steve at Golgonooza is arguing with me about this. He writes that a single meeting with Al Qaeda members in Iraq five years ago doesn't mean Saddam was on the verge of handing his weapons to Bin Laden. True, but it does mean he was lying about having "no relationship" — and a relationship with Al Qaeda, plus weapons of mass destruction, would have equaled an imminent threat. Still would, in fact. I'm worried the war may have convinced Saddam to empty his arsenals into the hands of terrorists from Al Qaeda or Hezbollah.Of course, Baghdad's relationship with the U.S. in the 1980s — through Donald Rumsfeld — did help cause the threat. No argument there. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:08 PM Sunday, April 27, 2003 It's official, 2The first real proof of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda — suspected, wondered about, and hashed over for months at Radio Free Mike — are trickling out of Baghdad. The Daily Telegraph and the Toronto Star are both reporting about Mukhabarat papers with Osama bin Laden's name clumsily whited out. Canada.com has more, including a little report at the end that Paris gave details of Chirac's pre-war conversations with Bush to Saddam's Foreign Ministry. The Telegraph piece adds that Russia did similar espionage work for Baghdad by spying on Tony Blair. These reports — along with the story of British MP George Galloway's recent sources of income — do a lot of damage to the official European peace movement, but we can't help pointing out that they leave the liberal-hawk position pretty well intact. Our criticism at Radio Free Mike was always about the White House's poorly-argued rush to war, not about the need to get rid of Saddam, and now we really, really wonder why the CIA failed — through this weekend! — to find evidence on its own of a Saddam-al Qaeda link that would have built a worldwide consensus for the invasion. Inigo Gilmore, the Daily Telegraph reporter who found the papers in Baghdad, told the BBC, "Perhaps significantly the CIA had been through many of these buildings but they seem to have missed this particular document." Hmm. I sure wish he'd elaborate.posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:14 PM Friday, April 25, 2003 It's officialThe war was not about weapons of mass destruction. Even ABC News is reporting that the invasion belonged to a wider (and rather fuzzy) post-9/11 plan. The idea — as regular Radio Free Mike readers know — was to fight anti-Americanism and give young Arabs hope by forcing representative democracy on a people who happened to be suffering under a brutal dictator in a central, strategically-placed Middle Eastern country. "'We were not lying [about the weapons],' said one official. 'But it was just a matter of emphasis.'" Oh. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:58 PMCounting the BodiesBy this grim math, the war in Iraq killed fewer Iraqis than Saddam Hussein would have killed in the same amount of time. Interesting point. It may even cut to a basic moral problem of the war. But it's still a lot of ends-justifying-means. The writer, H.D. Miller, says the war "by any standard ... was right and just," but he seems to forget that the easy, chemical-free invasion and the generally low body count argue against the whole excuse for invading — that Saddam was a serious threat. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:59 AMSunday, April 20, 2003 Lebanon RisingSteve at Golgonooza seems to think Syria makes a good point about weapons of mass destruction: If we want to rid the entire Middle East of nuclear bombs and mustard gas and sarin, fine, but start with Israel. In principle I agree, but it's an obvious ruse by Syria to keep out arms inspectors. Bush's argument will be that Damascus is hiding the weapons we can't find in Iraq — the very same weapons! built by our enemy! imagine that! — which are now a step closer to the nasty Hezbollah. And he'll probably be right.The trouble is that Hezbollah itself grew out of Israel's war on terrorism in Lebanon (and occupation of the Golan Heights), which is the sort of mini-imperial quagmire we now want to avoid in Iraq. If we'd stuck to hunting the perpetrators of September 11, I'll argue, instead of charging into Iraq with a half-earnest cry of "Find the weapons!" — a portable excuse for war that should travel nicely from state to state in the Middle East and ruin what's left of the U.S.'s good name in the process — we'd have more of the moral authority Bush needs to make his case in Syria and many other places that are clearly standing in the way of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Instead, he faces the dangerous problem of a cache of weapons stashed by Damascus and a restless population in Iraq that seems to want us to leave already. So Iraq may turn into another Lebanon before we get a chance to stabilize it, which presents us with a fateful choice: Leave, and abandon a failed state to fundamentalists and strongmen, or stay, and risk becoming a serious empire? Not a decadent empire, like Rome, or even a trade empire, like Britain, but a kind of paranoid global octopus that shuffles Marine bases around the world, cutting deals with local leaders in the name of freedom and democracy but following through only as far as necessary to keep our cities from being bombed. What do you think Bush will say? And what, really, is the safest thing? Josh Marshall thinks the noises about Syria made by Washington are just a warning. He doesn't think we're about to spread the war. Maybe not. But the exact demands we make on Damascus will reveal a lot, as Marshall writes, about "whether we're pursuing a minimalist or maximalist plan for remaking the Middle East," and at Radio Free Mike we're none too optimistic about the answer. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:48 AM Friday, April 18, 2003 Dump the press corps 2We don't always go in for it, but this really is moral equivalence: CNN's filthy, tyrant-appeasing behavior in Baghdad is no different from the sucking-up that goes on in Washington for access to "press conferences" like the one Bush gave just before the invasion. On this theme Michael Wolff has two hilarious Guardian columns, one about CentCom's "press centre" in Doha, Qatar — possibly the worst place in the world to gather news about the war — and another about a question he asked on international TV that earned him 3000 hate e-mails from Rush Limbaugh's listeners. Both pieces detail journalistic ass-licking for (pretty much nonexistent) access to powerful men, and Wolff ends with the point that daily briefings in Doha are just slick shows put on by Central Command. CNN's bargain was more of the same: Its reporting from Baghdad was basically Saddam-approved propaganda, broadcast to American audiences in exchange for keeping open a bureau — which, again, was the worst place in the world to report on the Iraqi regime. (Reporting from Jordan was probably better.) These people are smart; they know when they're genuflecting too far, so why do they do it? Wolff rather beautifully boils it down: "I will get my ass fired," a Canadian jouranlist tells him in Doha, "if I don't get myself on TV asking something." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:09 AMThursday, April 17, 2003 Syria watchWe're retiring this short-lived feature on Radio Free Mike, because "Syria watch" is now front-page news. Everyone can see what we're doing over there, not that Syria's response has been all that noble. The Damascus Ba'athists do truck with terrorists, and of course Bush wants to find those Iraqi weapons, which Syria is probably hiding.But a good guide for our motivations in Syria is the web site of the Project for a New American Century, a think-tank which most of the Iraq war's architects (Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld) either agree with or belong to. The basic PNAC notion goes like this: American influence is a good thing in the world, and forcing it on the worst governments in the Middle East — through diplomacy, or at gunpoint — will make the world freer and safer. Around Radio Free Mike we like democracy, we're not kneejerk Washington critics, and we don't go in for moral equivalence. ("Who's the unelected bully with the bombs?" etc.) We're glad Saddam's gone. But the thinking on the Project for a New American Century site reminds us of the thinking that led to American catastrophes in Nicaragua and places like that in the 1980s. It's ideology. It's the bloat that comes with having too much power, a kind of armchair quarterbacking that doesn't know or think seriously about facts and people on the ground. Iraqis keep promising to car-bomb our Marines if they stay in Iraq a day longer than it takes to set up an unfettered democracy, because they suspect we're not quite as selfless as the President claims; and yet PNAC insists we don't need an exit strategy. Which makes us think at Radio Free Mike that an American imperium in the Middle East — a presence, an influence, a watching-over of American "interests" — is part of the unspoken long-term plan. Here's Robert Kagan's vision of post-war Iraq, from last summer in the Washington Post, reprinted as a PNAC document: The idea [after World War II] was not simply to get rid of a dangerously aggressive Imperial Japanese government, nor merely to deny the Japanese the capacity to launch another Pearl Harbor. It was to rebuild Japanese politics and society, roughly in the American image. American policy in Japan, as in Germany, was "nation-building" on a grand scale, and with no exit strategy. Almost six decades later there are still American troops on Japanese soil. Iraq may not be that different. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:33 PM Saturday, April 12, 2003 Syria watchNow Richard Perle is talking about it. He says force is not out of the question if Syria won't cooperate with the U.S. on this matter of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. The funny thing is, he doesn't even mention arms inspection, at least not in this article. The idea seems to be, "Hand over the weapons, or we'll change your government." This kind of thing could really go on forever. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:57 AMFriday, April 11, 2003 Another good thingThe fall of Baghdad has shocked and dismayed leaders of the Palestinian intifada. How stupid or misinformed do you have to be to think Iraqis wouldn't gladly get rid of Saddam? The only people outside the Ba'ath Party who truly wanted him to stay were Palestinian terrorists on the take. (Without him, now, maybe they'll shrivel.) The trick is to prove these Hamas and Islamic-Jihad types totally wrong, even when they claim to be sad because "[we] have realized before others the magnitude of suffering that people may face under occupation.” posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:54 PMWednesday, April 09, 2003 Syria watchThe whole administration seems to be saying, with pretty much one voice, that we have no battle plan for Syria, no plans to invade. I hope not. But let's look at how the wind's blowing. First, there's a rumor that Saddam moved chemical and biological weapons across the border last December. ("Hussein wanted to hide his weapons, and I think the Americans know that," said Ariel Sharon, the source of this intelligence.) Also, Israel's Debkafile reports -- maybe not reliably -- that Saddam has been living in a luxury villa on the Syrian coast since last week. Rumsfeld has already warned Syria against helping Iraqi resistance, and today in his press conference he said Washington wanted peace with Iran and Syria, but "that depends on people's actions." In other words, we don't want war, but if we find a reason to go to war ...All of us at Radio Free Mike are against setting up an American imperium -- or Lebanon -- in the heart of the Middle East, and Josh Marshall has laid out a nightmare-scenario road map for just that kind of future. Yes, I know I just posted the same article below, but some things deserve the attention. Read it again, and see if Rumsfeld's remark today isn't in line with Marshall's theory. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:53 PM Death to TyrantsIraqis are celebrating in Baghdad, and the war -- whatever else we say about it -- has accomplished this great thing. We're not partisan enough around here to complain about something good. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:17 PMToo Much of NothingWeird. You can already pre-order my book on the Barnes and Noble site. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:52 AMTuesday, April 08, 2003 Ceci n'etait pas modifier
Promise. (Registration required, sorry. Via Steve at Golgonooza. CORRECTION: Photo via Instapundit; link via Steve...) posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:36 AM Monday, April 07, 2003 As usual,Josh Marshall is on top of things. He gives details about the neo-conservative ambition to "reform" troublesome nations under the sway of Islamic dictators until "democratic governments -- or, failing that, U.S. troops -- rule the entire Middle East." I like Marshall because he's a liberal who never downplayed Saddam's weapons of mass destruction: Baghdad was always a problem, in his mind, which the U.S. would have to face "sooner or later," but the official White House line on the current war perplexed him. His answers to the riddles are enlightening, if not all that encouraging. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:31 PMSunday, April 06, 2003 Michael KellyIf I can't add to the serious things other people have written -- I left my summer job at The Atlantic Monthly long before I got to meet him -- I can still point out that the far left's reaction to Michael Kelly's death has been disgusting. This is the same breed fool that shut down San Francisco when the war started. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 4:22 AMFriday, April 04, 2003 World War IV?My vision of World War III in Iraq hasn't, thankfully, come to pass, but CNN reports that James Woolsey is already saying it's World War IV, "and that it could continue for years." (Remember Woolsey belongs to the inner circle of neo-con minds behind the war.) At a UCLA "teach-in," Woolseysaid the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda. The piece added: Woolsey has been named in news reports as a possible candidate for a key position in the reconstruction of a postwar Iraq. Good God. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:26 PM Thursday, April 03, 2003 Salam Pax... has fallen eerily silent again, as news agencies around the world keep reporting, but then again last week saw the obliteration of phone service across Baghdad, so of course he can't post. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:00 PMSpooks in IraqJim Hoagland has a tantalizing but not very specific column in the Washington Post about the CIA's role in the war. He calls the March 19 "decapitation" strike an intelligence success, and overestimation of support in the south an intelligence failure. OK, so that much is obvious. But he also writes, without getting into much detail:The people the CIA can buy and control are unlikely to contribute much to the democracy Bush has promised Iraq. With the CIA's complicit backing, they will in fact bar the road to that outcome if Bush's commitment wavers even slightly. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:47 PM Tuesday, April 01, 2003 Iran and SyriaI know it's not an original thought, by now, but it needs to be registered here: Is it just coincidence that Rumsfeld and Colin Powell have issued sharp warnings to the two nations on the neo-conservative watch list for "regime change" after Iraq? The more ideological this invasion looks, the less I like it. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:08 AM | |
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