Living in despair about Iraq
by Scoop Shachtman, 3 February 2008
Patrick Cockburn, running against the relatively good news about Iraq’s retreat from the brink of utter disaster from other sources, finds Iraq is still an appalling mess.
I wonder what situation could ever be considered good enough for The Independent. Presumably Iraq will continue to be a mess, until it is no longer politically acceptable for it to be so. Contrast Cockburn’s take on Fallujah with that of Michael Totten. Same city, at virtually the same time, yet both articles are near polar opposites.
Can two people go to the same place and yet make such different assessments?
Sunday 3 February 2008 at 17:12
Mike Totten is an old fashioned reporter. Apprenticed to journeyman over several years, he ventures out with pen and notebook, pays close attention to things that happen around him, talks to people, writes it all down, types it all up.
Whatever it is that Cockburn does (is it work?), it’s different.
Sunday 3 February 2008 at 18:21
Whatever it is that Cockburn does (is it work?), it’s different.
It’s certainly not journalism, but whatever it is cannot be taken seriously.
Sunday 3 February 2008 at 18:30
Cockburn *wants* the Islamic “resistance” to win. As a thoroughly western journalist, he doesn’t, of course, subscribe to the mores of Islamism: but he thinks that the peoples of Iraq should be, so that George Bush and the “West” can be defeated.
Sunday 3 February 2008 at 18:39
Gawd. Furedi hearts Cockburn: Heaven-made love match, caste no bar.
Sunday 3 February 2008 at 18:49
Francis, that’s Alexander Cockburn, not Patrick. Though I’m not sure that there’s much difference between the two in reality.
Sunday 3 February 2008 at 18:55
My bad.
Sunday 3 February 2008 at 19:00
It’s not the first time I’ve made this mistake, but the Cockburns are ideological as well as biological brothers.
Sunday 3 February 2008 at 20:37
Aye, it’s not quite the same as mixing up the Hitchens brothers.
Monday 4 February 2008 at 6:00
The 3 Cockburn brothers, like their father, are political agents and practitioners of agitprop, not journalists. The same can be said about many other British “journalists”.
Monday 4 February 2008 at 11:09
Is this the Iraq where two mentally disabled women were blown up by remote control bomb? Good news indeed…
Monday 4 February 2008 at 21:55
You obviously are unfamiliar with the use of the word “relatively”. Try looking it up in a dictionary.
Tuesday 5 February 2008 at 16:52
You obviously are unfamiliar with reality - I suggest you look out of the window occasionally.
Tuesday 5 February 2008 at 21:34
Do you accept that Iraq is relatively less violent now than it was before the surge.
A simple yes or no is all that is required.
You won’t find the answer out of your window.
Tuesday 5 February 2008 at 21:35
The Iraqi Ambassador to Canada, Howar Ziad: “I prefer messy democracy to the stability of tyrants”
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 11:05
Before the surge is irrelevant. The position in Iraq is now bloodier and more violent than even under Saddam - which took some doing. It is neither democratic nor stable.
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 11:27
“The position in Iraq is now bloodier and more violent than even under Saddam.”
The situation in 2006 was extremely bad, the situation now is improving. Would you like to see it improve more, or would you like to see it worsen to suit your politics?
“It is neither democratic nor stable.”
It is more democratic than it was, and there is the potential for it to become more democratic as the security situation improves.
The stability of dictatorships is something the US used to be regularly criticised for, remember Rumsfeld helping stability by shaking Saddam’s hand?
Yet here you are, like some reactionary Reaganite fuckwit, wishing for stability. Do you like Saudi Arabia because it is stable? Or North Korea, because it is stable?
Stability in these places is failure.
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 17:07
I don’t agree the position is improving, and I don’t think the democratic position is particularly good either.
As for stability I was paraphrasing the quote from the Iraqi ambassador to Canada just above one of my comments. Perhaps it would help if you read your own blog.
Like many on the internet you clearly think personal abuse and shouting are adequate substitutes for thinking. You know absolutely fuck-all about my politics or view of the world. If you did, I might listen to your criticisms of it. Until then you can piss off.
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 17:10
“Like many on the internet you clearly think personal abuse and shouting are adequate substitutes for thinking.”
….
“Until then you can piss off.”
har har. Very good Ian — I see what you did there!
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 17:10
Good another scrap. We love scraps …
Fight! Fight! Fight!
The prospect of winding people up is what gets us out of bed in the mornings.
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 17:15
Charlie Brooker is right:
[A]ll internet debates, without exception, are entirely futile.
There’s no point debating anything online. You might as well hurl shoes in the air to knock clouds from the sky. The internet’s perfect for all manner of things, but productive discussion ain’t one of them.
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 17:22
What I did was lose my temper. What you are doing is calculated and designed to corrupt and disrupt any attempt at debate.
If you think internet debate is pointless then this blog is just self-abuse - which is logical since you abuse almost everyone else…
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 17:53
…and for the avoidance of doubt…
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 17:53
The link for this was chewed up:
http://ibanda.blogs.com/panchromatica/2004/10/guardian_unlimi.html
Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 20:30
Well that’s a totally acceptable view to hold Ian. I particularly like the second paragraph. All too often people are too weak, without any commitment when a task becomes hard. For example, if Al Qaeda abuse two women, and use them as suicide bombers they are likely to throw their hands in the air and proclaim the whole of Iraq is lost - the precise response that jihadists want. I think to look at the security picture as a whole, not run about like a headless chicken after each atrocity.
However, I still don’t think you understand the term “relatively good news”. That can include situations such as “I’m afraid your house has burnt down, but we did manage to save one of your children.” The second part of that sentence is, as you have already worked out no doubt, the “relatively good news”. It is not a denial that the house has burnt down, presumably with other children within it.
The point is that you read the above and assumed/implied I was suggesting Iraq is full of good news, which I did not. There is some relatively good news in comparison to the dark pit of despair the country was in 18 months ago. If you don’t believe that, then fine. I think you are wrong on the basis of the reports I have read, and from my contacts.
Here’s some other good news I posted, with a wind-up:
http://drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/2007/11/10/good-news-from-iraq/
And here I am being critical of the previous management of Iraq.
“It’s a shame that a modicum of competence seems to have taken 3-4 years to attain. Previous poor performance that has undermined public support for democracy in Iraq may still snatch defeat from the jaws of a sort of victory. ”
http://drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/2007/11/01/the-surge-must-be-working/
And…
“If your view on Iraq is that the invasion was marred by the competence of its prosecution, then at least welcome the fact that the US have learned lessons and may, at long last, be on the right track. If they are, then resolve will be needed, I can see no reason why any rational progressive would oppose it.”
http://drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/2007/08/13/what-if-the-surge-is-working/
Thursday 7 February 2008 at 19:36
What you are doing is calculated and designed to corrupt and disrupt any attempt at debate.
Bollocks–opinions and political positions arrived at after considered thought and analysis are not going to be changed by a few negativist fuckwits leaving electronic graffiti in a comments box on a blog.
Monday 11 February 2008 at 16:41
“considered thought and analysis”
“negativist fuckwits leaving electronic graffiti”
hmm…