Continuing the theme of the last post, Billmon thinks that we may be having Another Oceania Moment Whiskey Bar blog 07/23/06.
I should explain a bit about Billmon's perspective. He's a George Orwell fan - a liberal one, even though conservatives have tried to adopt him as one of their own. For Athene's sake, Orwell was a combatant in an anarchist militia in La Guerra Civil de España (Spanish Civil War). He's hardly some hack "free-enterprise" fanatic. "Oceania" is a reference to Orwell's 1984.
I've picked up a few other conventions from Billmon that look less and less exagerated the more we know about the current administration in Washington. Billmon has been known to use the "Dear Leader" title of which I'm so fond for Shrub Bush. He sometimes refers to Congress as our "Chamber of People's Deputies", referring to the toothless, Potemkin Parliament of the old East German Communist regime.
He also routinely refers to "the Cheney administration". I haven't adopted that exclusively yet. But after reading Ron Suskind's The One Percent Solution and John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience, I'm convinced that Deadeye Dick really is the Dark Lord of this administration.
Anyway, Billmon in the post I linked is referring to indications that our Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), aka, The Long War, is now shifting enemies to unite with our Sunni friends to oppose Shi'a extremism. Now, the main strategic effect so far of our grand Mesopotamian crusade has been to replace a secular Sunni regime in Iraq with a Shi'a-dominated regime that is friendly to Iran, which is also Shi'a. This has considerably enhanced Iran's relative power position in the Middle East. For that reason, Iran has supported the United States in its efforts to install an elected government in Iraq, which turned out as they expected to be mostly Shi'a.
Well, I haven't checked Republican State News Service, FOX News, today. But here's what Billmon is seeing.
By the way, just for anyone who might still care about, you know, the enemy that actually attacked America on 09/11/01, that would be the Sunni Salafist group, Al Qaida. They consider most Sunni apostates. They hate Shi'a even more.
White House aides have said they consider the Lebanon crisis to be a "leadership moment" for Mr Bush and an opportunity to proceed with his post-September 11 plan to reshape the Middle East by building Sunni Arab opposition to Shia terrorism. Yesterday Mr Bush cited the role of Iran and Syria in providing help to Hezbollah. (my emphasis)
Holy history-rewrite, Batman! The post-9/11 GWOT/Long War has always been about "building Sunni opposition to Shia terrorism"? Not building worldwide opposition to Sunni-Salafist-Al-Qaida type terrorism, or to terrorism in general?
As Billmon sensibly observes of this idea:
Either way, it boggles the mind that anyone who isn't a certified graduate of the Minitrue School for Outer Party Members could write an English sentence even suggesting such a thing. Is that why America crushed the most powerful Sunni regime in the neighborhood [Saddam's Baathist regime in Iraq]? Is that why Democracy Boy cheered as an Iran-friendly government took power in Baghdad? Does it explain why the Iraqi Interior Ministry was turned over to the tender mercies of an Iranian-backed militia movement?
This is the closest thing I've seen yet to a flat-out admission that the Iraq War was a disastrous strategic mistake. Or conversely, if you're a true Orwell disciple, it's simply another meaningless switch in an endless war whose real purpose isn't to defeat the enemy, but to keep the prols docile and the ruling party firmly in power in this country. You can take your pick, I guess.
Now, I doubt that they have such a stereotypically Orwellian 1984 goal in mind, if this is really the way they are going. Look, Halliburton has to figure in here somewhere!
Whoever Harnden was using as his source seems to be from the Iran-is-behind-everything school of the Israel-Lebanon war, not the Syria-is-behind-everything school of which Bush seemed to be a member when he was talking [Bush] to Tony Blair last week. (Just like I use [Cheney] as a euphemism, as in "what the [Cheney]?", Bush's famous full-mouth conversation with Blair has given me a new one, as in "cut that [Bush] out".) Harnden reports:
"She's [Condi-Condi] not going to come home with a ceasefire but stronger ties to the Arab world," said a senior official. "It's going to allow us to say that America isn't going to put up with this and we have Arab friends that are against you terrorists. What we want is our Arab allies standing against [Shia] Hezbollah and against Iran, since there is no one who doesn't think Iran is behind this. We're going to say to Hezbollah and the terrorist groups, 'This will not stand.'
"That is the way to bring real change to the Middle East. If you just have a ceasefire then, sooner or later, they go back to fighting."
The "Arab umbrella" policy is accompanied by largely uncritical support for Israel, which reflects strong pro-Israel sympathies among a majority of Americans and which has put the US at odds with all its allies except Britain. Yesterday's outspoken comments by Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister, in which he accused Israel of punishing the entire Lebanese nation, were the first sign that Britain, too, might be close to abandoning the US position.
If this is the new Party line, then it would be consistent with these two reports, both from Inter Press Service:
After posing as the champion of democratic reform and the long oppressed Shia minority in the Arab world, the administration of President George W. Bush appears to be scurrying back to Washington's traditional policy of strong support for the region's Sunni-dominated, pro-U.S. authoritarian governments.
The shift has actually evolved over much of the past year, as elections in Lebanon, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Egypt and elsewhere demonstrated the unexpectedly broad - and unwelcome - popularity of anti-Zionist and anti-U.S. Islamist parties, both Sunni and Shia. ...
But the administration's retreat may accelerate as a result of the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon where Israel has launched punishing military campaigns against, respectively, Sunni Hamas and Shia Hezbollah - both groups with a strong social base and grassroots support.
For many months, the Bush White House has been attacking some Democrats in Congress for calling for a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq. Cheney condemned such proposals in a CNN interview Jun. 22 as "the worst possible thing we could do", and portrayed them as "validating the theory that the Americans don't have the stomach for this fight."
But for the past six months, the Bush administration has been secretly pursuing peace negotiations with the Sunni insurgents, in which it has explicitly accepted the principle that an eventual peace agreement will include a timetable for U.S. withdrawal.
Rosanne Cash has a song called "Change Partners" (1982) that goes:
Somehow I break free Somone becomes me And when I stand upright I'm filled with a new light I'm given one more chance So I change partners In this new dance
If the Cheney-Bush administration really is going down this road, maybe they should adopt that as their theme song. Although, Rosanne being a hardcore Democrat, I don't think she'll be performing it at "Down With The Shi'a" rallies for the Cheney-Bush Long War.
