We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I have just received this briefing, courtesy of Stratfor. Since a hefty subscription fee is required in order to link to the article, here is an excerpt:
“Former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, reputed to be a personal friend of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, made a lightning visit to Baghdad on Feb. 23. The purpose and results of the meeting are shrouded in secrecy, apart from a statement by Moscow that Hussein was asked — and agreed — to cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Reliable Stratfor sources within the Russian government say Hussein indeed has promised to cooperate with the inspectors’ demands — including that Baghdad scrap its al Samoud 2 missile program by March 1, an announcement that sources expect to be forthcoming within days.”
It seems that this ’11th hour offer’ also includes an invitation for Western oil companies to recommence business in Iraq and a blanket promise from Hussein to ‘play nicely’. The offer is being heavily sponsored by the French, the Germans and the Russians and is expected to be received warmly by HMG.
But the real test is whether or not it is accepted in Washington. It could be acceptable if it could then be presented as having only be achieved by the credible threat of force. However, the policy goal in Washington is regime change in Iraq and not status-quo.
Rejection of the offer by Washington could see Mr.Primakov flying back to Baghdad to broker yet another offer, although what more Hussein could possibly put on the table is hard to imagine.
A casual reader might think we at Samizdata are one-sided in Israel’s favour. Not at all. We’re for Israeli’s and Palestinians to sort out their differences one way or the other. We are for the continued existence of a democracy (Israel) and the creation of a new liberal democracy (Palestine).
There are even times when I side unreservedly with Palestinians. The quote taken from this item:
“People in one of the homes targeted for demolition threw hand grenades and fired shots at approaching Israeli soldiers — marking the first time a demolition was met by serious resistance. The seven adults in the house surrendered after a four-hour standoff and troops blew up the building.”
rather strikes a chord with me. I imagine the same will be true of almost any libertarian. It is simply a given the people in the house were in the right in their use violent force in defense of their home.
There was another incident within the last few weeks where Palestinians blew up an Israeli tank. Whichever side you are on, you clearly cannot call blowing up a tank a terrorist act. I can’t even imagine a circumstance in which blowing up a tank could be so construed. When I hear some one say such a thing, in my mind’s eye I see a big flashing red sign over their head, blinking “PROPAGANDA ALERT! PROPAGANDA ALERT!”. I would say the same even if it were an American M1. While I would much prefer our guys got their guys first, I am not going to resort to name callling when the other side happens to get their licks in first.
On the other hand… there is no excuse, ever, for whatever reason, of walking into a nightclub, bus, train station or student union filled with nothing non-combatants going about their normal day to day lives… and blowing yourself up. THAT is a crime against humanity. The fellows who fail to kill themselves should be hung, drawn and quartered, in whatever order experts declare to be the optimally painful one.
But back to the Defenders Of Property. They have my whole-hearted support in any such action. Death to the Bulldozers!
Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz pointed out we will no longer need troops in Saudi Arabia after Saddam is gone. I’ll just quote him because he says it all:
“First of all, let’s talk about Saudi Arabia. We won’t need troops in Saudi Arabia when there’s no longer an Iraqi threat. The Saudi problem will be transformed. IN Iraq, first of all the Iraqi population is completely different from the Saudi population. The Iraqis are among the most educated people in the Arab world. They are by and large quite secular. They are overwhelmingly Shia which is different from the Wahabis of the peninsula, and they don’t bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory. They are totally different situations. But the most fundamental difference is that, let me put it this way. We’re seeing today how much the people of Poland and Central and Eastern Europe appreciate what the United States did to help liberate them from the tyranny of the Soviet Union. I think you’re going to see even more of that sentiment in Iraq.”
The general tenor of what is coming out of Washington lately is much less “diplomatic” than in the past. Spades are being called spades; phony allies are being given the respect they deserve…. and I imagine the rate of coronaries inside the beltway has fallen considerably.
Soon is a good time to get out of Saudi Arabia in any case. They are seeing serious poverty in the cities now; they are seeing young men hanging out on the streets and ignoring the the Vice and Virtue cops and there is considerable terrorism occuring inside the country. The ruling family has done everything in its’ power to cover this last fact up. They imprison and torture a few Brits or others every time something gets blown up. They claim the bombs are “gang” murders for the alcohol trade between foreigners.
There is also some liberalization going on inside the country and it would be best for the liberalizers if we were not there as a target for the conservatives.
Do economists have much to tell us about war, terrorism, interventionism and the pros and cons? It strikes me that there is a bit of a dearth of stuff on this area from the libertarian-orientated economics camp, though I would be very happy to stand corrected.
After all, if we are going to invade Iraq as part of a grand strategy to bring liberalism, prosperity and free internet access to the Middle East, does this not in a way smack of the kind of hubristic utopianism which the likes of F.A. Hayek warned against when applied to socialism and central planning?. Do issues of defence and foreign policy inhabit seperate intellectual universes from business?
Discuss.
Khidmir Hamza, a former member of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program has written an interesting article for the Opinion Journal:
“My 20 years of work in Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program and military industry were partly a training course in methods of deception and camouflage to keep the program secret. Given what I know about Saddam Hussein’s commitment to developing and using weapons of mass destruction, the following two points are abundantly clear to me: First, the U.N. weapons inspectors will not find anything Saddam does not want them to find. Second, France, Germany, and to a degree, Russia, are opposed to U.S. military action in Iraq mainly because they maintain lucrative trade deals with Baghdad, many of which are arms-related.”
Mr Hamzi also points out biochem carrying artillery shells are always stored empty in Iraq due to corrosion problems. They are only filled when they are to be deployed and used.
He says much more about the uselessness of inspections. This is from someone who worked inside the other side. It’s worth reading.
This looks as if it might be interesting, in the Far Oriental sense I mean.
Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world’s oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources.
The vessels left port in late November, just a few days after UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix began their search for the alleged Iraqi arsenal on their return to the country.
Uncovering such a deadly cargo on board would give George Bush and Tony Blair the much sought-after “smoking gun” needed to justify an attack on Saddam Hussein’s regime, in the face of massive public opposition to war.
The suspicious ones amongst us will no doubt be saying: how convenient! If it’s just what they wanted to happen, then who’s to say they didn’t make it happen?
Well, either way it is interesting. If it’s a real threat, then … well if that isn’t interesting to you then you are now having a near death experience, and the usual follow-up to that will be with you very soon. And if the Axis of Bush contrived it, then that just shows you that these guys are serious, and serious right about now (what with now being when they broke the story, the timing of which is interesting either way), which in my opinion is all to the good, but which I can understand others not liking so much. We may never know.
Here at Samizdata.net we have our own somewhat wordy house style, and we like to spell the stories out for the time when Samizdata.net roams the earth unchallenged, but paltry things like independent.co.uk have collapsed into oblivion. If this had been Instapundit (to whom, by the way, personal and Samizdata thanks for this link, which made quite a difference here yesterday), this would just have said something like: I don’t know what this is about, but it sure looks like something.
Indeed.
The Guardian is a true equal opportunity newspaper. It has generously extended its ability to be proven wrong on many issues to Salam, who welcomes the opportunity.
I am getting a real kick out of posting this. THE GUARDIAN IS WRONG, check your sources baby. In the article titled Iraqi defence minister under house arrest it says:
He [Lieutenant-General Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Jabburi Tai, minister of defence] is not only a member of President Saddam’s inner circle, but also a close relative by marriage. His daughter is married to Qusay Hussein, the dictator’s 36-year-old younger son – considered by many as his heir apparent.
Wrong, Falsch, Khata’a. Qusay’s wife is the daughter of Maher abdul-Rasheed who is a very important military man. He led the armies which ‘liberated’ the Fao area in the south of Iraq in April 1988. He was put under house arrest a year after that for some reason or other and is now living in the Iraqi western desert raising camels and staying out of politics. Qusay does not have a second wife only Saddam has. So there is no use saying that those loony muslims have more than one wife, maybe she is the second missus Q.Hussein.
Last night one independent source in Baghdad contacted by the Guardian confirmed that Gen Sultan was in custody. “He continues to attend cabinet meetings and appear on Iraqi TV, so that everything seems normal,” said the source, a high-ranking official with connections to Iraq’s ruling Ba’ath party. “But in reality his house and family are surrounded by Saddam’s personal guards. They are there so he can’t flee.”
I, not a ‘high ranking official’, can tell you that his family is not under house arrest, his son is still driving that fancy car around Arasat Street intimidating everybody like all good sons of ministers do.
To be fair, the main point of the article was reporting on the signs of dissent in Baghdad in the past few days. And that must be a good thing.
So, the human shields arrived in Baghdad already! Well, most of them. One of the three red London buses broke down in Italy, and several activists dropped out after being dug out of snow drifts near Istanbul, but, heroically,
“The rest endured bitterly cold weather, illness, poor living conditions and a great deal of bickering.”
Well, you need mental toughness and nerves of steel to become a Human Shieldster, of course! Just ask Ken O’Keefe, Shield Leader: he used to be in the American Marines. Although you might have trouble finding him, as sadly, he has now gone nuts and is no longer part of this brave Western anti-war protest:
“Ken O’Keefe, their informal leader and a former American marine, burned his US passport and designed himself new travel documents proclaiming him a “Citizen of the World”. As a result, he was detained in three countries.
Mr O’Keefe has yet to arrive in Baghdad and Mr Joffe-Walt last heard of him in Syria.”
Mr Joffe-Walt mentioned various other hardships and tribulations which the Shield had suffered in its crusade to save human history from itself:
“Very few people knew each other. I did not know any of them and it was difficult to organise it. There were lots of different ideas on when to go to bed, how long to spend on the bus.”
Shield-members will apparently be camping
“inside hospitals, schools, power stations and other buildings “needed for basic human living”.”
Erm, I wonder if they’ve negotiated that with the Iraqi humans planning to be living inside them already? If bombing starts, numbers of safe buildings available for human living could possibly be reduced. I can tell the Shield has considered the possibility of bombing, because one of them said,
“the presence of vegans and spiritual healers would shield the buildings from harm if war broke out.”
Of course. And equally predictably,
“Saddam Hussein’s regime, which normally admits westerners with great reluctance and treats them with deep suspicion, has granted the human shields three-month visas and given them freedom to go where they wish.”
It takes a nutter to know a nutter, I suppose.
(Thanks to the Telegraph)
Stephen Zunes, Chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, writes:
It was the United States, through its Central Intelligence Agency, that overthrew Iran’s last democratic government, ousting Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. As his replacement, the U.S. brought in from exile the tyrannical Shah, who embarked upon a 26-year reign of terror. The United States armed and trained his brutal secret police – known as the SAVAK – which jailed, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of Iranians struggling for their freedom.
The Islamic revolution was a direct consequence of this U.S.-backed repression since the Shah successfully destroyed much of the democratic opposition. In addition, the repressive theocratic rulers that gained power following the Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah were clandestinely given military support by the U.S. government during the height of their repression during the 1980s. As a result, there is serious question regarding the United States’ support for the freedom of the Iranian people.
I have two observations to make about this:
- There is no mention of the support given to Ayatollah Khomenei by the French government before 1979. No doubt French politicians including Valéry Giscard D’Estaing and Jacques Chirac had no thoughts whatsoever of obtaining oil concessions once the hated US puppet was ousted.
- To the extent that what Chair Zunes writes is at all plausible, outside the USA, the last sentence is undoubtedly true. However, I suspect that there really is a change of view in the US administration, to the effect that simply finding more efficient despots won’t do. If this is the case, I believe that saying so publicly and repeatedly, will be somewhat disarming.
The following stands out among the many comments to my previous post on Iraq.
How much is an Iraqi life worth? To me personally, about zero. Here’s why:
– I have no friends in Iraq (and doubt I ever will by the end of this post)
– No Iraqi signs my paycheck
– No Iraqi makes anything special that I can’t buy anywhere else (oil?)
– Iraq is on the other side of the globe
“But they’re being killed” you say. So are many other people. What about the North Koreans? What about the people who will effectively be killed because they cannot afford medical care due to this war? What about third world countries where parents have more children than they can afford to feed? Please make an objective, logical argument why the life of an Iraqi rates above (not just equal to) these others.
There are two issues in this comment. One is the old boring question “Why Iraqis and not North Koreans, or Chinese, or any other suffering people?” We have repeated countless times here on Samizdata.net that we do not consider lives of Iraqis above other individuals suffering elsewhere. Yes, I do want the world to be rid of North Korean, Chinese, Iranian and any other statist murderers. By yesterday, if you please. It’s long overdue and given that my taxes also pay for the army (or what’s left of it), I have no hesitation in supporting its use in cases when this becomes part of a government strategy.
The fact that the US and UK government policies are temporarily aligned with my view of the world does not redeem them in my eyes or make them somehow better entities. My objections to the state and my hatred of anything statist is not negated by my support of Bush and Blair in their determination to give Saddam his due. Samizdata’s eye will watch over the American attempts to establish democracy in Iraq with the same vigilance as ever and hurry to point out any misdemeanour by the inherently collectivist and kleptocratic state.
More importantly, the comment touches on an issue far greater than Iraq and the international pandemonium associated with it. Why do most of us hate to see people suffer? Why should we be moved by a sight of a child corpse, a woman tortured or a man shot? Why does the world remain shocked, moved and outraged by the suffering endured by those in Nazi concentration camps and Stalinist gulags (although unfortunately too few pictures serve to fuel the horror over those)?
I do not count myself among the emotionally incontinent (public expressions of grief) and the emotionally unsatiated (reality TV). My outrage comes from the belief that an individual is more important than a lofty idealistic concept, more so since every ‘utopia’ has built its edifice on a large pile of human bodies. The more idealistic and utopian the vision, the longer it takes to defeat it and the larger the ‘mountain of skulls’ left behind.
 
Savonarola’s Florence, Robespierre’s France, Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Kim Jong-il’s North Korea, Saddam’s Iraq, note that there is an individual’s name attached to every totalitarian nightmare. We are forced to ‘care’ about them, whether we like it or not. If we are lucky, we have not been affected directly, but they certainly had an impact on the way we live today, simply as a result of the international politics shaped by their existence. → Continue reading: Old style morality…
Those who oppose war with Iraq on the grounds that that civilians would be killed fail to understand that people are already dying due to Saddam’s misrule. Saddam Hussein has not earned his name “the Butcher of Baghdad” for nothing. He has been ruthless in his treatment of any opposition to him since his rise to power in 1979. A cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering remains the hallmark of his regime.
The repressive violence of Saddam’s regime is the norm and not something used by the authorities in exceptional circumstances as it is in many countries. The repression, imprisonment, torture, deportation, assassination, and execution are strategies followed by Saddam’s regime in dealing with Iraqi people. The following are few examples of these crimes:
- The killing of Sunni leaders such as Abdul Aziz Al Badri the Imam of Dragh district mosque in Baghdad in 1969, Al Shaikh Nadhum Al Asi from Ubaid tribe in Northern Iraq, Al Shiakh Al Shahrazori, Al Shaikh Umar Shaqlawa, Al Shiakh Rami Al Kirkukly, Al Shiakh Mohamad Shafeeq Al Badri, Abdul Ghani Shindala.
- The arrest of hundreds of Iraqi Islamic activists and the execution of five religious leaders in 1974.
- The arrest of thousands of religious people who rose up against the regime and the killing of hundreds of them in the popular uprising of 1977 in which Shia cleric, Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Hakim, the leader of SCIRI was sentenced to life imprisonment.
- The execution of 21 Ba’ath Party leaders in 1979 in Iraq , the assassination of Hardan Al Tikriti former defence Minister in Kuwait in 1973, and the former Prime Minister Abdul Razzaq Al Naef in London 1978
- The arrest, torture and executions of tens of religious scholars and Islamic activists in such as Qasim Shubbar, Qasim Al Mubarqaa in 1979.
- The arrest, torture and execution of Shia cleric Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Sadr and his sister Amina Al Sadr (Bint Al Huda) in 1980.
- The war against Iran in 1980 in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, and many more were handicapped or reported missing.
- The arrest of 90 members of Al Hakim family and the execution of 16 members of that family in 1983 to put pressure on Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Hakim to stop his struggle against Saddam’s regime.
- The occupation of Kuwait which resulted in killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and injuring many times that number in addition to the destruction of Iraq.
- The assassination of many opposition figures outside Iraq such as Haj Sahal Al Salman in UAE in 1981, Sami Mahdi and Ni’ma Mohamad in Pakistan in 1987, Sayed Mahdi Al Hakim in Sudan in 1988, and Shaikh Talib Al Suhail in Lebanon in 1994.
It is well documented that Saddam’s regime has produced and used chemical weapons against the Iraqi people and against neighbouring countries. Here are some examples of his use of such weapons:
- It is widely known that Saddam’s regime dropped chemical bombs by air fighter on Halabja in Northern Iraq in 1988. The reports of the UN, other international organisations and Western governments confirmed that more than 5,000 thousand civilians were died within a few hours. Eye witness accounts, photos and films have verified the horror of this attrocity.
- Saddam’s regime used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers during Iraq-Iran war. Many of them were sent to Europe to receive medical treatment and they were seen on TV across the world.
- General Wafiq Al Samarae, the former director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, admitted in his book Eastern Gate Ruins that Saddam’s regime used light chemical weapons against Iraqi people in the cities of Najaf and Karbala to crush the popular uprising of March 1991 which followed the defeat of Saddam after his invasion of Kuwait.
- After the crushing of the uprising, large number of people took sanctuary in the Marshes of Southern Iraq. In 1993 Saddam used chemical weapons against those hiding there in order to crush resistance.
 
Now tell me again that Bush or Blair are worse than Saddam…
I have no time for the those who took to the streets this weekend, de facto, in support of Saddam’s murderous regime. These are people who feel the need to soothe their morally atrophied consciences deafened by political correctness, the modern obsession with emotion and the life of comfort and material excess1.
Their act of protest is a far cry from a reasoned consideration of facts, the reality of international politics, of Iraq and the suffering of its people under Saddam or Iraq’s threat to the Western world. Theirs is a response based on emotions only, without thinking of the consequences of such action. Hate America? Join the protest. Hate Bush and the Republicans? Join the protest. Hate Tony Blair and the government? Join the protest. Hate Israel? Join the protest. Hate politicians? Join the protest. Hate the fact nobody takes you seriously? Join the protest. Hate your mediocre existence? Join the protest. Hate rational discourse? Join the protest. Miss the marches of the communists, peace movements, anti-Vietnam protesters etc of the Cold War era? Feel inadequate or need to feel important? Join the protest.
In fact, ‘peace and motherhood’ have very little to do with the global protests against the US and UK determination to remove Saddam. What is the point of peace, if the price paid for it is someone else’s pain and suffering? Proclamation of support for all things pink & fluffy and for general concepts of ‘goodness’ is the perfect anchor for those drawning in moral vagueness unable to reason their way out complex issues that defy simple solutions.
How much easier it is to look away, or to hastily cover the offending sight with excuses, defensive answers and idealistic slogans or level accusations against those who try to point out unpleasant facts. This type of anti-rationalism prefers slogans to serious consideration of complex reality.
However, this is a luxury not afforded to those who battle for their survival – physical and moral – wrestling the remnants of their humanity from the daily tyranny, whether they live in Iraq or Iran, North Korea or China. It is a fight that they are almost certain to lose without help, their oppressors poised to pounce on any expression of integrity and purpose as a sign of defiance. No-one can undo the suffering already inflicted on them. I protest against those who deny them the chance of living like humans for the rest of their lives.
Note1: I have nothing against comfort and life of excess, the point is that those who have it should not claim the moral high ground in deciding what is better for those who have to face different and starker kind of reality.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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