Fvck the remaining hawks. Yes, this is the most appropriate title for this post.
By Thoreau
This is hardly news, but it bears repeating: Baghdad has little electricity, little running water, decrepit streets, and no garbage pickup. But it wasn’t like this before the invasion!
Just think about that: The basic services of life, things that we take for granted, and things that Baghdadis used to take for granted, are impossible. And they’re impossible because we went there and replaced an awful but functional system with bloody chaos.
It outrages me more than I can describe that there are still apologists for this. It outrages me more than I can describe that there are people who can look at this and say “Yep, we sure made the right choice there!” And it outrages me more than I can describe that the people who look at this and see no evil are actually taken seriously. They are invited to speak and write in serious venues. They are warmly thanked for offering their amoral apologies. They are allowed to remain in power rather than impeached, convicted, removed, and stripped of privilege. They are able to walk down the street undisturbed when they should be cursed and pelted with trash. They should be sprawled on a sidewalk next the McPherson Square Metro Station, hoping to cadge enough quarters to enjoy the rare treat of laundering the vomit out of the only shirt they own, praying all the while that decent people do not recognize them beneath the matted beard and tangled hair.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
May 20, 2008 @ 11:36 pm
Amen. And I say that in all seriousness.
Comment by josephdietrich —
May 21, 2008 @ 6:48 am
Seconded.
Comment by absence of something —
May 21, 2008 @ 7:15 am
Fortunately for the hawks, from 9999 kilometers away, the stench of sewage and the reek of putrefying corpses are more than adequately masked by the sweet, sweet smell of freedom..
Comment by abb1 —
May 21, 2008 @ 8:25 am
Eh, outrage-schmoutrage. This too will pass. Whatever happens, it’s all for the best.
Comment by Just a Quick Question —
May 21, 2008 @ 8:56 am
As horrible as it seems, I’m seconding abb1. This too will pass. Remember Fallujah?
Comment by Monte Davis —
May 21, 2008 @ 9:57 am
Rummy’s “freedom is messy” is really quite like the blithe ends-and-means aphorisms of Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao… and doubtless Saddam Hussein, although his table talk is less well documented.
Comment by Stu —
May 21, 2008 @ 10:12 am
Clearly, this means we have to stay in Iraq in order to restore basic services. Our inability to do so for the last five years is only evidence that…um…look over there, a scary black preacher!
Comment by Jennifer —
May 21, 2008 @ 10:44 am
Anything we do is good because WE do it.
That’s what it boils down to.
Comment by ChrisWWW —
May 21, 2008 @ 11:49 am
But come on. Wasn’t it worth it to find out if Saddam had WMDs?
Comment by cavjam —
May 21, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
C’mon, it’s not the warhawks’ place to attend to minor details like potable water, housing, food distribution and/or electricity generation. Their job was to beat drums and shop for Cheetos. In this they were quite successful.
To rebuild Iraq we need to turn to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a gummint agency (with the words “Private Corporation” in it, imagine) run by BFF Robert Mosbacher the reserves of which now exceed $4 billion. It in turn could hire such paragons of Amerkan know-how as Bechtel and KBR. (In fact, KBR delivers so much electricity some of it leaks into the bodies of U.S. soldiers.) KBR with its heralded competence could surely do so simple a job as providing clean water. And Bechtel with its expertise could deliver its Katrina trailers to Baghdad and maybe dig tunnels under the Tigris and Euphrates. Thus we bring the Amerkan way of life to Iraqis so they can know true freeance and better accept Jeebus as their Lord and Savior.
Comment by jkc —
May 21, 2008 @ 2:36 pm
Power, power, power. When the Repubs are fully vanquished–having no trace of official authority left–they’ll have to blame some faction for their defeat and humiliation.
In the interest of peace and humanity, let’s make sure they remember the neocons led them to ruin.
The optimal number of War Parties in a Constitutional Republic = Zero.
This is politics. This is the art of the possible.
Libertarians can do their part by nominating Bob Barr and helping kneecap that warmongering bastard John McCain.
Comment by bill —
May 21, 2008 @ 6:49 pm
Jennifer is right. How can it be wrong for America to occupy a foreign land? It can’t.
If the Iraqis don’t have electricity and water and sewage its not the fault of Americans. Its the fault of Iraqis.
When Bush gave them their freedom, how did they use It? Did they get to work making Iraq a carbon copy of a Red state as, they were encouraged to do?
No, they looted and fought among themselves and started a guerilla war against their liberators.
They don’t deserve to be occupied by America. America should pack its bags and go where it will be appreciated, where the people are begging for freedom and shopping malls and school vouchers.
Iran.
Comment by Mojo —
May 21, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
This too will pass. Remember Fallujah?
Would that be Fallujah the first time we pacified it or the time in 2004 when we razed most of the city or is it the peaceful Fallujah where a suicide bomber blew up a police station earlier this week?
Comment by Just a Quick Question —
May 22, 2008 @ 6:19 am
Well my question was specifically about the post-Blackwater non-effigy burning Fallujah, which I guess would be the ‘04 but your point is excellent. I just took a peek at the wiki page to confirm and discovered that the estimates put Fallujah’s population at around 5% of pre-war levels. That’s some tasty freedom right there.
Comment by absence of something —
May 22, 2008 @ 7:09 am
freedom doesn’t come for free
Comment by John and Al —
May 22, 2008 @ 8:45 am
Just remember, guys, we would have been worse!
Comment by Jon H —
May 23, 2008 @ 6:26 pm
Wait for a Republican to make the argument that Iraq’s services may be shot, but that only means it’s slightly worse than Naples.
Comment by s.m. koppelman —
May 26, 2008 @ 10:00 am
Let’s see: the Iraqi state has been eradicated. Whatever’s left has been privatized, mostly to a small group of large American companies. The British and American oil companies are doing great. Iraqi labor costs have plummeted, their domestic industry is in a shambles, and their markets have been thrown open to cheap goods.
If you’re an alum of the University of Chicago econ department, it looks like one of the biggest successes ever. The folks over at Cato and the AEI can’t stop high-fiving in the hallways. Failure? Outrage? What are you, a socialist?
Comment by Capt. Fogg —
May 26, 2008 @ 11:30 am
Um — did someone actually say freedom isn’t free? I hope that was meant to be sarcastic.
Comment by JP —
May 26, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
It outrages me more than I can describe that there are still apologists for this.
–Of course it does. That you’ve apologized for Saddam’s years of mismanagement and murder as “functional” – implying that none of the above were serious problems under his rule – sort of undermines that moral position, though.
Comment by Jason Van Steenwyk —
May 26, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
You know, if you ever bothered to learn just what you were talking about, you would know that the reason that Baghdad had 16-24 hours of electricity under Saddam was because his Baghdad kleptocracy stole electricity from the rest of the country.
You cannot use Baghdad electricity as a proxy for the experiences of the rest of the country. The fact is that Iraq is generating more kilowatt hours of electricity than it did before the war. The fact is also that while the remainder of Iraq outside of Baghdad experienced an average of 4-8 hours of electricity per day under Saddam (and that’s even if you trust his self-reported numbers), over the last year, Iraqi communities ex-Baghdad have been receiving 9-14 hours of electricity per day.
Yes, Baghdadis used to take electricity for granted because they stole it from the surrounding areas. And now that the electricity is being distributed far more equitably, the reliable idiots like you get led around by the nose by myopic reporters who can’t be bothered to check their assumptions and by the Baghdad interests leading them along.
One day, if you ever graduate to the grown-up table, you’ll find that things aren’t so cut and dried as you think they are.
Comment by Decline and Fall —
May 27, 2008 @ 6:32 am
Wow Jason, lay off the kool-aid. The electricity is but one of many, many problems in the lives of the average Iraqi that has been exacerbated by our liberation. Saddam was a horrible man and I’m very glad he’s gone–as is every single Iraqi I’ve ever spoken with on the subject. (Full disclosure: I’ve spoken to hundreds of them about this.)
America’s failure with regard to the daily life of Iraqis has been, first and foremost, a failure to understand that the most important thing we could have done in the aftermath of the invasion was to return life to normal. I’ve often said it would have been nice to have posted a copy of Maszlow’s hierarchy above the desk of every war planner just to remind them that cell phones and satellite dishes don’t make up for jobs, electricity, running water and medicine.
So no shit they rebelled–who can blame them? We allowed riots to happen while we secured pipelines. Then we dismissed the chaos, violence, malnutrition, abysmal hygiene and lack of basic necessities as “messy freedom,” as if they should have been prostrating themselves before our benevolence instead of looking for a way to feed their families.
One day you’ll also “find that things aren’t so cut and dried as you think they are.”
Comment by JP —
May 27, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
… the most important thing we could have done in the aftermath of the invasion was to return life to normal.
–To address the task in its most literal sense: that would have been even worse. It would have meant shooting all looters on sight, executing disgruntled clerics, and bulldozing the homes and neighbourhoods of particularly militant outfits.
Such was what passed for normal under the old order.
Comment by Assistant Village Idiot —
May 27, 2008 @ 11:10 pm
Facts! Jason, you can prove anything with facts! Don’t bring that s*** around here.
Decline and Fall, it is true that there are many standards other than electricity with which we could judge life in Iraq. However, electricity was what the article was about, remember? So, pointing out that one of the key premises of the article was misleading is rather to the point.
Highclearing: The electricity in Baghdad is worse than under Saddam.
Jason: That’s because Saddam used to take Iraq’s electricity for Baghdad
D & F: Well, it’s not just about electricity.
And when we have gone through the whole list, plus/minus, pro & con, good & bad and see that hyperbole suggesting that it’s been all bad in Iraq with no benefit is necessarily moronic, will there be another article on another blog about the electricity?
It’s like playing whack-a-mole.
Comment by Dmitry —
May 28, 2008 @ 1:34 am
I envy you, healthy-wealthy stupid americans, who never lived in dictatorships and cannot even imagine how bad it is. Your fathers made your life so good that you even do not understand what they struggled for.
Electricity is not everything, dudes.
Comment by LD —
May 28, 2008 @ 8:30 am
What a bunch of whining losers. You asswipes are hilarious. Iraq will be free, and you’re naysaying will be long forgotten, even by you. A few years from now you’ll even be taking credit for our success.
Comment by Decline and Fall —
May 28, 2008 @ 10:16 am
Assistant Village Idiot,
You might want to read the whole sentence where the electricity is mentioned: “Baghdad has little electricity, little running water, decrepit streets, and no garbage pickup.” So no, it’s not just about electricity. It’s about the state of a variety of basic services that are still worse than they were before we gave them their messy freedom. I was responding to Jason, who honed in on the one line about electricity, set it up as a straw man, and then knocked it down with all the authority of a child just discovering the weeble-wobble.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 28, 2008 @ 11:41 am
That’s as inspiring now as it was in 2004.
Comment by Jason Van Steenwyk —
May 28, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
D & F
Sorry to break it to you, but the term ’straw man’ refers to the creation of an argument no one is making.
The original article, however, specifically referred to electricity in Baghdad. Unfortunately for the author, I happened to know exactly where to put my hands on the data (Brookings Institution, Iraq Report…I think the last one was in April) and the argument was easily falsified.
Get back to me when you understand the basics of critical reasoning.
As for the garbage pickup, you should forward your complaint to the Mahdi Army, who has a rather inhibitory effect on garbage pickup efforts in Iraq.
The fact that you’re blaming the US for the actions of its enemies shows just how bankrupt your position is.
Comment by JP —
May 28, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
That’s as inspiring now as it was in 2004.
–Yeah, and “f*ck the remaining hawks” is top shelf. If you’re “Thoreau” with a mouth/hand like that, does that make him Yeats?
Any way, Jason made a good point that Baghdad was a resource pig in a strained society. That is to say, because of local mismanagement and the usual patronage networks that exist in Arab countries, Iraq’s infrastructural concerns predate the ‘03 invasion.