{"id":579,"date":"2005-08-14T12:50:52","date_gmt":"2005-08-14T19:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=579"},"modified":"2005-08-14T12:50:52","modified_gmt":"2005-08-14T19:50:52","slug":"freedom-isnt-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2005\/08\/14\/freedom-isnt-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom isn’t Free"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>THIS<\/a> continues to get me.<\/p>\n

Tie it in with the “We were all wrong.” (a statement made by Alan Greenspan when, ohmygosh, Bush’s tax cuts resulted in huge budget deficits, or a statement made regarding weapons of mass destruction<\/i> — which, clearly isn’t the case or else where do these<\/a> cartoons come from?)<\/p>\n

What you had was Rumsfeld stating things about how “Iraqi oil will pay for the war itself”, and Rumsfeld not being laughed off the stage. A low ball figure thrown out about the cost of the Iraq War, and people still considering the Bush Administration’s predictions credible. The question arises, and I’ve never been able to answer this question: Did they really believe themselves?<\/p>\n

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.<\/p>\n

“What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,” said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. “We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”<\/p>\n

Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the escalating insurgency. “Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we’re helping Iraqis succeed,” President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.<\/i><\/p>\n

It is here that I chime in with a great irony. Keep in mind that what you hear, that Bush chimed in about “liberation” and “freedom” late in the game after<\/i> wmds disappeared as a reason, is false. It was always in there — and the name “Operation Iraqi Freedom” served some purpose therein. Indeed, it doesn’t take much scratching to see that for most true-believing pioneers of the “Neoconservative Clique”, freedom rushing in through Iraq to the whole Middle East was<\/i> the reason to go into Iraq.<\/p>\n

So. What and where is the free Iraq? If you’re a woman in Iraq, you’re probably less free in the most likely outcome for most of Iraq. It appears Secular Dictatorship is preferable to Theocratic Constitutional mumbo-jumbo for women’s rights. For the male — it’s a bit difficult to guage. (Assuming someone gets around to giving them electrical power.)<\/p>\n

But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad’s 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.<\/p>\n

Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.<\/i><\/p>\n

Okay. You’re male — you have facial hair. Is that all? Oh well… at least it’s a basic social custom.<\/p>\n

You’re just going to have to get used to the idea that “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is most likely going to result in some other form of lack-of-freedom, and not freedom, for the Iraqi populace. Take it from there.<\/p>\n

“We didn’t calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude,” said Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University.<\/i><\/p>\n

Sectarianism is what George Washington warned us about. Sectarianism is, reportedly, what George W Bush got a crash course on a couple days before we went into Iraq — ie: what is a Kurd, what is a Shiite, what is a Sunni?<\/p>\n

Actually, I’m stuck with the great question of “freedom”. Iran, as we all know, elected their nationalistic leader — Mossadegh– prime minister. The US got rid of him, installing the Shah. A much despised figure, the Iranians tore him out and replaced him with a Theocracy. So… Iran rid themselves of dictatorship (of a sort) and replaced him with… dictatorship (of a sort)?<\/p>\n

Is it more free if the imprisionment is somehow inherently more from the nation<\/i> as opposed to stamped from an external source? I don’t know.<\/p>\n

On security, the administration originally expected the U.S.-led coalition to be welcomed with rice and rosewater, traditional Arab greetings, with only a limited reaction from loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The surprising scope of the insurgency and influx of foreign fighters has forced Washington to repeatedly lower expectations — about the time-frame for quelling the insurgency and creating an effective and cohesive Iraqi force capable of stepping in, U.S. officials said.<\/i><\/p>\n

I sit here stunned. “Greeted with rice and rosewater”, ye say. I recall the Statue-dropping stagecraft had roses. I don’t remember the rice. But perhaps my memory is shaky.<\/p>\n

The good news is we’re just a few months shy of that great “wait. maybe George W Bush was right all along” moment. (An election in Egypt, which has held many elections over the years; an election in Iraq; a protest in Lebanon. If our attention span could handle it, a bit later Kuwaiti women were given the right to drive.) So, maybe we can get an empharial high again in a few months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS continues to get me. Tie it in with the “We were all wrong.” (a statement made by Alan Greenspan when, ohmygosh, Bush’s tax cuts resulted in huge budget deficits, or a statement made regarding weapons of mass destruction — which, clearly isn’t the case or else where do these cartoons come from?) What you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}