You Stupid, Stupid Fool
Here’s an interesting piece on Kanan Makiya, one of the wonderful ‘intellectuals’ that helped get us into the Iraq war. This part really struck me:
That the Americans committed error after error in Iraq, Makiya takes as a given: their biggest mistake, he maintains, was the decision to occupy Iraq and govern the country themselves, rather than allowing the Iraqis to take over. “I did not want to see the United States micromanage Iraqi affairs because, I feared, that is where things might go wrong,” he said.
Uh, dude? It doesn’t take a heck of a lot of brainpower to understand that this was the plan all along.
Hell, just open up any edition of the Weekly Standard and you’ll see brazen calls for America to transform itself into a 19th Century imperial power. Here, I’ll help you find some examples. Like this one, from Max Boot:
The irony is that there is no shortage of U.S. experts in all these fields, in and out of government, many of them veterans of prior peacekeeping operations. What is lacking is a central office that can marshal their expertise. We need to create a colonial office–fast.
Of course, it cannot be called that. It needs an anodyne euphemism such as Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. But it should take its inspiration, if not its name, from the old British Colonial Office and India Office. Together, these two institutions ran large swaths of the world with a handful of bright, honest, industrious civil servants. They had an enormous impact, given the small numbers involved; there were seldom more than 1,000 members of the Indian civil service to administer hundreds of millions of Indians. Like its British predecessors, the U.S. colonial service needs to be an elite civilian agency that can call on forces for assistance where appropriate.
Boot adds in some weaselly nonsense at the end about how we shouldn’t really become like the British empire, but rather we should merely learn from how we operated. In other places, though, he’s much more explicit:
Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.
There’s also this:
What is the greatest danger facing America as it tries to rebuild Iraq: Shiite fundamentalism? Kurdish separatism? Sunni intransigence? Turkish, Syrian, Iranian or Saudi Arabian meddling?
All of those are real problems, but none is so severe that it can’t readily be handled. More than 125,000 American troops occupy Mesopotamia. They are backed up by the resources of the world’s richest economy. In a contest for control of Iraq, America can outspend and outmuscle any competing faction.
The greatest danger is that we won’t use all of our power for fear of the “I” word–imperialism.
And of course there’s this classic by Jonathan Last:
STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, “Attack of the Clones.” There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas’s series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.
Here’s another good one that laments the withdrawal of European imperial powers from Africa.
These people are old-skewl Imperialists, buddy, and they’re quite open about it. They don’t have your country’s best interests at heart — they simply believe they’re entitled to rule the world.
Now I have an image of Dick Cheney in jodhpurs stuck in my head. Thanks for nothing.
Here’s some related content.
I know it’s good, because the Dangeral Perfessor said so.
These rear-view mirror revisionist wingnuts are just somethin’, aren’t they? After pro-war whoring themselves for a few years, they turn around and pretend like it didn’t happen and there’s no proof that they ever said a war with Iraq was fucking-A cool in the first place.
They remind me of my old family dog who strolled in the living room corner while we were watching the T.V. one day, took a big ole shit on the carpet and when busted for doing the obvious bad gave us a look like “What?” You can believe the dog doing it but just can’t believe said dog thought it would get away with it.
You had me at “colonial office”.
The sickest part is how, well envious they sound. That and the nostalgia. “Boy those British imperialists sure knew how to git er done all right. If only we could do things like that. For the good of the primitives of course.”
What could possibly go wrong?
Wha? No, seriously, WTF? This makes it sound as though the British just waltzed into Afghanistan and had a great old time of it. Britain’s (and Russia’s) machinations in re Afghan conquest had mixed results at the best of times. If my rather casual memory of the history doesn’t fail me, a British Mission to Kabul, which rode past the bones from the Afghan War on its way to the court of Afghanistan, died to the last man in the besieged Mission house. The lesson of trying to make a peaceful colony of Afghanistan is rather like the history of attempting to invade Russia in the winter.
I just seized on this one point, because it shows what dreadful misconceptions of jolly old Empire dance around in the pointy little heads of these morons.
“Micromanage Iraqi affairs”?
Doesn’t one have to be somewhat in control of something before one can proceed to micromanage?
Once again my mind is blown to smithereens.
I had thought you guys were engaging in satire. That icing on the cake, Last’s sympathy for the Empire to the point that he thinks Star Wars actually has them as the heroes – that was just too blown out, I thought.
I thought that *had* to be satire. No one could seriously attempt to make such a thoughtless, inane, idiotic hypothesis in real life. Could they?
It turns out once again that reality has trumped fiction. Unable to handle Lucas’ hamhanded anti-Imperialist metaphors, he had to take this science fiction film and re-interpret it so that he could feel better about his **politics**.
Woo.
I’m speechless now.
Gundamhead gets five points for the “Fairly Oddparents” quote.
Let’s get back to Kamiya. This guy was naive and out of touch BEFORE the war started. He was held up then as some sort of dreamy reformer who would help usher in a glorious period of peace, prosperity, yada yada yack yack. He’s clearly the source of Cheney’s “greeted as liberators” nonsense (see the “sweets and flowers” quote in the Times).
So why in the fuck does the New York Times, in 2007 after it’s all gone straight to shit, do this hagiographic piece on this goober? What is the point? Who gives a shit what Kamiya thinks now?
The only thing I can think of is that all of this is strategically timed with the Roger Cohen et al. “woe is us, we tried to do good, and now everyone hates me” bullshit. It’s the same conceit: “it went to shit, I feel so bad, I meant well, waah, waah, waah.”
Where in the fuck does this idea that Kamiya or Cohen’s “feelings” have the slightest goddamn thing to do with figuring out how to end this clusterfuck come from?
Memo to the hawks: WE DON’T CARE. You feel bad? Good. You should. You advocated an immoral war, you trusted George W. Bush, you demonized war opponents as unpatriotic. YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS, and that the fact that you “feel bad” means precisely nothing. Hundreds of thousands of people are still dead, and our foreign policy is in the toilent for a generation. Next to that, your feelings aren’t worth a shit.
OK. We’re done here.
Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.
Oh yeah, and I want to get back to wearing the fashions of two centuries ago too. Someone, slap Boot with trout, preferably on the edge of a towering cliff somewhere on the English coast!
Britain plans to halve its forces in Iraq by the Spring and make further cuts from there. Nobody in Britian supports these dumbass wars. Ditto for the world at large.
why yes, we, the white civilized nations need to teach those wogs how to behave themselves…..
…..or we’ll kill them in the process.
After all, there’s a huuuuuuuuge amount of evidence demonstrating U.S. willingness to encourage Arab and Muslim states in the Middle East to determine their governmental and economic and foreign affairs without U.S. domination.
Huuuuuge amount. I know I had a pile of that evidence somewhere. Can’t find it, but then maybe it was in a closet I cleaned out, or maybe hiding in a corner of a bathroom cabinet, or maybe lying unnoticed in an outdoor light fixture indistinguised among the death moths.
By the way, it’s kind of nice how it’s western liberal intellectuals who decide whether or not your country will continue to suffer under a brutal tyrant or be utterly destroyed and torn apart to see if anything positive comes of that.
Here’s a little rule of thumb. No, no, it’s free advice. Just a kind of a measuring stick for your future attempts to make people’s lives better. ‘Cause I know that’s what’s important to you.
If you are thinking about helping a foreign population, and in order to provide that “help” you need any two of the following: tanks, jet fighters, an entire mechanized army, a bombing campaign, a “thunder run”, “shock and awe”, artillery, forward operating bases or “combat operations”, you probably are going to do significantly more harm than good.
While this should be quite obvious, maybe you guys should write it down on your arm like a third-string quarterback in case you forget again…
mikey
Should say “dead moths”, although “death moths” sounds kind of interesting, like the dried up scaled hawk intellectuals who flitter about their warmongering president until they are burned by the heat of his sheer stupidity.
Who doesn’t miss the Empire?
Joseph Banks [“gentleman scientist”], 1780s, Australia
Harry Smith [governor] and two soldiers, 1850s, during one of the “Kaffir” wars in Cape Colony:
Reverend Arthur Male, 1878, in Afghanistan:
Ah. Good times. Beloved by all. And I haven’t even brought in the Indian, Caribbean, North American, Central African, and Opium War fun.
P.S. Why’d you have to dig up that Lefevre piece of shit? (See Crooked Timber )
Coming soon from NASA: a never-setting sun, perfect for the new American Empire! It’ll make global warming seem like a brisk autumn evening.
Candy: with a possible exception of Mongols, nobody invaded Russia in winter. Swedes tried, but they lost Battle on Ice. Imagine 13-th century iron-clad knights slugging it out in the middle of a big lake. At least they were not overheating under all those layers.
[check winter temperatures in Mongolia; harsh winter around Moscow is basically average in Mongolia, and these people were nomads]
What happened to Napoleon and Hitler is that a summer campaign dragged into winter, in spite of plans to avoid it.
British had reasonable ideas about invading Russia: (1) attack the warmest province, Crimea; (2) replace pitch helmets with balaklavas; (3) appoint competent nurses to be in charges of troops that would be down with cholera; (4) have such a mediocre success in the field that the problem what to do outside the relatively warm confines of Crimea would never arise.
Like invadors of Russia planned how to avoid winter, our leaders planned how to avod protracted occupation of Iraq. If I recall, a popular exiled Iraqi leader was to be greeted with flowers by greatful followers (all three of them) and quickly establish an effective and popular administration. Our troops would occupy themselves building permanent bases, but otherwise they would remain unmolested. The cost woud be so small that it was even hard to pronounce such a small number. Pico-dollar or nano-dollar?
There were some unresolved problems in pre-war planning. Should Iraqi oil production be doubled, or would it be better to triple it? Should Syria and Iran be attacked right afterwards, with the shock still fresh, or after some time, to allow their population to wax envious of lucky Iraqis?
Adolph Hitler thought highly of British colonial policy, too. He instructed that all members of the SS view the movie, Lives Of The Bengal Lancers. He was in thrall that such small numbers of a foreign power could hold a subcontinent in thrall.
O.K. mistakes were made. But, Fats Durston this new American empire will be totally different! We’ll be greeted as liberators. Seriously this time! And also as usual you’re all forgetting about the freedom spread.
FREEDOM SPREAD!!!!
Wait, wait!
Irony alert: doesn’t this mean we should begin withdrawing today?
Thanks, Piotr. That wasn’t really what my comment was about – I was just using the idea of invasion of Russia in the winter as an example of a Really Bad Idea(TM) like unto the bad idea of trying to make Afghanistan a peaceful colonial paradise – but I’m always happy to learn interesting historical facts. Really, I’m not being snarky. Almost all my knowledge of history was acquired by reading, on my own.
The summer invasions which became winter debacles are a great analogy for the Iraq situation, certainly. And a lovely illustration of the good old Law of Unintended Consequences.
Hey, my little (TM) looked fine in preview – what happened to it?
FREEDOM SPREAD!!!!
I thought that’s what the Dutch put on fries…
my favoritest part of this whole article:
when one of the Very Important But(t) Troubled Men asks “how many people have died in Iraq since Sadaam” and another “mutter something about some study” and then there’ s a pause, apparently.
Here’s why it’s my favoritest:
the Lancet study has been debated all to shit in everywhere that I read. And yet these VIBTM aren’t really familiar with that shit except for a passing mutter. I love it when it’s made clear to me that the people who ruin the world aren’t that interested in the specific details of how the world has been ruined.
“Of course, it cannot be called that. It needs an anodyne euphemism such as Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. But it should take its inspiration, if not its name, from the old British Colonial Office and India Office.”
That’s satire, right? ‘Cause GEORGE ORWELL was once a British colonial policeman in South Asia, where he learned firsthand how much the locals hated Limey and his White Man’s Burden.
How can such feeble brains write such world-class satire?
Goddammit, I couldn’t resist the urge to read the Boot.
Yeah, they just had to, to quell that bad ol’ disorder. Just like in Iraq, where the fucking British Indian army invaded and created said disorder. And he’s a century off on the disintegration of the Mughals and Safavids.
Good models. Burundi, Rwanda, Southwest Africa and Tanzania. The “international” mandates sure got them places up and running and running good.
Doesn’t one have to be somewhat in control of something before one can proceed to micromanage?
Um, not where I work . . .
Micromismanage?
What clueless pricks these people are. Direct British rule in India began only in 1858. Before that, the East India Company, a corporation not a government body, had ruled India so badly that the natives rose up and tried to kill every Brit they could find. The Colonial Office didn’t administer hundreds of millions of Indians on its own. There was a huge bureaucracy in the country itself, much of it Indian. As other commenters have noted, our experience in Afghanistan was disastrous, and elsewhere, our presence was often transitory, generally commercially oriented, or resulted in the extermination of the locals, who were not on the whole delighted with our governance of them. You may be familiar with our approach to the Americas, which formed a fine model for you when you became independent.
So why in the fuck does the New York Times, in 2007 after it’s all gone straight to shit, do this hagiographic piece on this goober? What is the point? Who gives a shit what Kamiya thinks now?
They need a puppet to burn in effigy once the last troops have been choppered from the roof of the embassy. Better some little brown wog with his percentage-chipping talk than One of Us, the neocons and political operatives mutter. Remember, the most important thing Dick Cheney “learned” from his low-level position in Nixon’s White House during the Watergate years is that Nixon just wasn’t criminal enough to achieve the Glorious Thousand-Year Repub-Reich. If only Nixon had been strong enough, determined enough, noisy enough to persuade the media that everything… the break-ins, the illegal wiretaps, the recordings, the coverup, the war itself… was the responsibility of some mid-level Emmanual Godlstein! Surely Bebe Rebozo or even (whisper) Henry Kissinger would have been a better sacrifice to the harpys of the reality-based community! Because if only Nixon hadn’t “taken responsibility”, the candy-ass, and gotten himself and the whole Repub entity permanently shackled to the Watergate clusterfuck, then America would have been spared all those 1970s attempts at racial and gender equality and other not-Repub forms of filthy hippy egalitarianism!
Well, as Dick Cheney’s sock puppet has said “Fool me once, can’t be fooled again”, because this time the ratfuckers will set up as many Straw Traitors as it takes to hold back the Reality tides! And the New York Times will be in the front ranks, hoisting this week’s Token Sacrifice high above the murderous crowd, ever eager to serve their overlords, even at the cost of their own credibility…
The irony is that there is no shortage of U.S. experts in all these fields, in and out of government, many of them veterans of prior peacekeeping operations.
Many of them, indeed, tossed out of their jobs in the government because the government, for some reason as yet unspecified, didn’t farking want knowledgable or qualified people within a thousand miles of the place.
Jeezus Buggeryfuck Christ on a moped, these guys are stupid. Stupid in the bone. They’re sending out stupid rays that will infect all our kids. Oh, noes, will no one think of the children?
Heh heh.
Buggeryfuck.
Tha’s COOL….
/Buttheadvoice
mikey
and then there was the boer wars, we have to kill ’em to liberate them, oh, how I love the sight of concentration camps in the morning………….
For excellent insight into the British experience in Afghanistan I can heartily recommend a novel by Philip Hensher, “The Mulberry Empire”. Yes it is fiction (fake but accurate?) yet quite sound on the history and a terrific read besides.
Brad, this one kicked some ass.
The British in Afghanistan!?! I suggest “The Great Game,” a history of British/Russian rivalry in central asia. From Alexander the Great on, no would be conquer has had a good time here.