The Trilemma

Slavoj Zizek:

The Dreams of Others -- In These Times: Of the three features—-personal honesty, sincere support of the regime, and intelligence—-it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive...

Comments

[anne]

Actually, the commentary has all sorts of information and significance but understanding that takes the patience to read with understanding which is what reading should be about.

[anne]

We must leave Iraq completely and immediately, though I know we will not. We have needed to leave Iraq completely and immediately these 4 years.

[trevelyan]

What a great film review! The reader comments are also worth enjoying.

[anne]

"Of the three features—-personal honesty, sincere support of the regime, and intelligence—-it was possible to combine only two, never all three."

Perfectly explaining Iraq forever war waging and occupying Republicanism.

[anne]

"Of the three features—-personal honesty, sincere support of the regime, and intelligence—-it was possible to combine only two, never all three."

Well I am as ready to extend the evaluation to any Democratic presidential candidate or Congressional representative who is not supporting leaving Iraq completely and immediately, with an emphasis on "completely" as opposed to the lunatic idea of keeping a Korea-like American presence for 50 years.

[anne]

Matthew Yglesias:

A person affiliated with a rival campaign directed my attention to this Ted Koppel commentary on NPR in which he observes:

"I ran into an old source the other day who held a senior position at the Pentagon until his retirement. He occasionally briefs Senator Clinton on the situation in the Gulf. She told him that if she were elected president and then re-elected four years later she would still expect U.S. troops to be in Iraq at the end of her second term."

Molly Ivins had given up on Hillary Clinton for here horrid stance on Iraq. I have not quite given up, but she had better commit to leaving Iraq completely and fast or I will never ever vote for her no matter the opposition.

I had thought Clinton was learning, but she may not be capable of such learning or the necessary honesty.

[anne]

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/06/the_wars_end.php

Ah, here is the Matthew Yglesias reference....

[rea]

Anne: how often have the remarks of an anonymous source quoted in the media about the Clintons turned out to be true?

[anne]

Rea:

"[H]ow often have the remarks of an anonymous source quoted in the media about the Clintons turned out to be true?"

Well asked, and I am cautious in this regard, but notice that the source is Ted Koppel and Hillary Clinton interviewed in the New York Times has specifically stated she would leave troops in Iraq as president.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/washington/15clinton.html?ex=1331611200&en=5fb23776ba644bc2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

March 15, 2007

Clinton Says Some G.I.'s in Iraq Would Stay if She Took Office
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and PATRICK HEALY

WASHINGTON — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a "remaining military as well as political mission" in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced but significant military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military....

[This is a stance I find beyond accepting, and I want a statement from Hillary Clinton that as president we will be leaving Iraq completely and immediately.]

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/washington/15clintontext.html

March 14, 2007

Following is a transcript of an interview by Michael Gordon and Patrick Healy of The New York Times with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton:

Q. If you were to be elected president, what specific steps would you take to try to bring a close to the conflict?

SENATOR CLINTON: Well obviously I've thought a lot about this. And of course the choices that one would face are neither good nor unlimited. We're in a very difficult situation that has been made worse by the failures of the administration. So what will be inherited is not completely clear, but likely to be:

Continuing sectarian violence; no real resolution of the political disagreements on the ground among the Iraqis; an unsettled if not unstable region, trying to figure out what the roles they want to play in regard to Iraq might be; a beachhead of Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda operatives; the Turks being concerned about what is happening among the Kurds.

There's a long litany of very difficult challenges. What I'm hoping is that with the slight change in policy that I am detecting in the Bush administration, that perhaps some progress could be made over the next nearly two years. Certainly, the willingness to engage Iran and Syria could possibly lead to some changes that would be beneficial to the overall structure of the situation we confront.

The surge, which is ongoing, and obviously if we're going to do it we hope it is more successful than perhaps I think it could be.

I'm going to root for it if it has any chance of success, but I think it's more likely that the anti-American violence and sectarian violence just moves from place to place to place like the old Whac a Mole. Clear some neighborhoods in Baghdad, then face Ramadi. Clear Ramadi, then maybe it's back in Fallujah. It's just difficult without a consensus on the part of the Iraqis, that they're going to deal with it in some concerted effort, that we will have any long-lasting impact on the level of sectarian violence.

So come January of 2009, of course, a lot of it depends on what is actually happening on the ground.

I think we have remaining vital national security interests in Iraq, and I've spoken about that on many different occasions.

I think it really does matter whether you have a failed province or a region that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda. It is right in the heart of the oil region. It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel's interests.

So I think we have a remaining military as well as political mission, trying to contain the extremists.

I think we have a vital national security interest and obligation to try to help the Kurds manage their various problems in the north so that one of our allies, Turkey, is not inflamed, and they are able to continue with their autonomy. I think we have a vital national security interest — if the Iraqis ever get their act together — to continue to provide logistical support, air support, training support. I don't know that that is going to be feasible, but I would certainly entertain it. And I think we have a continuing vital national security interest in trying to prevent Iran from crossing the border and having too much influence inside of Iraq.

Those are all different moving pieces on the chess board. And from the vantage point of where I sit now, I can tell you, in the absence of a very vigorous diplomatic effort on the political front and on the regional and international front, I think it is unlikely there's going to be a stable situation that will be inherited.

And so it will be up to me to try to figure out how to protect those national security interests and continue to take our troops out of this urban warfare, which I think is a loser, and I do not believe that it can be successful. If we had done it right from the beginning, we might have had a fighting chance. We did not, and I think it is beyond our control now.

But what we can do is to almost take a line sort of north of, between Baghdad and Kirkuk, and basically put our troops into that region — the ones that are going to remain for our antiterrorism mission; for our northern support mission; for our ability to respond to the Iranians; and to continue to provide support, if called for, for the Iraqis....

[anne]

Again, Iraq should not be likened to Korea. We must leave Iraq completely and immediately.

[anne]

Even as I write, I hear a public radio analyst claiming "as many as 65,000 Iraqis have been killed" through war and occupation these last 4 years. A thoroughly irresponsible amoral comment. Try an estimate about 650,000 Iraqi excess deaths. Try that figure.

[anne]

This from a reporter covering the American military; "as many as 65,000 Iraqis have been killed." And we wonder, or fail to wonder, as the defense department requires photographers to gain written permission from individual American soldiers in advance to photograph the soldiers should they be wounded.

[anne]

Again, a public radio analyst is telling us that 29,000 American soldiers have been killed or wounded in Iraq. This is tragically and grossly wrong. Even beyond knowing how to class psychological injuries that gradually emerge, there were over 50,000 injured soldiers when the year began. There were more than 100,000 soldiers who had been granted disability status after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan by October 2006. Psychological injuries are in the tens of thousands. Traumatic brain injuries were found by military researchers in recent months to be running at 17.8% of returning soldiers from Iraq or Afghanistan.

[anne]

The need is to leave Iraq, completely and immediately. All else is continued tragic lunacy, destructive of body and mind and soul and material.

[andres]

Zizek's Trilemma, btw, applies not just to communism but to all political movements whose tenets/platform becomes scripture and where skepticism and disagreement are seen as signs of disloyalty. This rot may start at the bottom of the political movement, but it filters its way up.

Thus, the Republican Party today has (a) a President who is honest and supportive, and dumb as a brick, and (b) a Vice-President who is intelligent and supportive, but obviously not honest. The electoral base of the Republican Party hews closer to (a), and its oil/business/WSJ financial base hews closer to (b). Unfortunately, the (b) part also has substantial control of the news media, which informs (a) and keeps it to somewhere close to 50% of the electorate.

Until the country solves the dilemma of the Republican Party, I fear it will be in Iraq a long time to come.

[andres]

As for Hillary Clinton, I might be simplifying her excessively, but I think it is safe to tag her as a secular Republican. She has no truck with bigotry against gays, Muslims, Mexicas, and doctors who perform abortions, and is honest enough not to belong to a party that does. Nor does she pander to the Christian and militarist wings of the electorate.

But in many other ways, including a commitment to keep Wall Street money happy and to continue the quasi-imperial role of US foreign policy, she differs little from Republicans. And it is going to take quite a lot to persuade me otherwise.

[anne]

Cleverly apt analysis, that is worrisome. There are however so many Republican leadership transgressions, and there is Iraq, that may have tilted the balance to pronounced change.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/opinion/14thu2.html?ex=1339473600&en=0bb6368e42c72954&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

June 14, 2007

Another Sorry Ascension

It apparently wasn't enough for the Bush administration to pack the Department of Justice with political operatives. The White House has now nominated one of the most meddlesome of those partisans, Hans von Spakovsky, to a powerful post on the Federal Election Commission.

This is the agency charged with making sure elections are fair — an especially ludicrous perch for Mr. Spakovsky. As a voting-rights appointee in the Justice Department, he promoted Republican initiatives to crimp the ballot power of minorities and the poor who typically favor Democrats.

In one of his party missions, Mr. Spakovsky overrode the recommendations of the department's staff professionals and approved a regressive law in Georgia that required voters to provide photo identification. The law, a voter suppression tool worthy of the Jim Crow era, was later blocked by the courts. A former G.O.P. county chairman in Georgia, Mr. Spakovsky failed to recuse himself from such an obvious conflict of interest. He also pushed for department approval of Tom DeLay's Texas gerrymandering plan — the plan that the Supreme Court ruled violated the Voting Rights Act.

Feverish for the Republican edge, Mr. Spakovsky drove career lawyers from the Justice department and constantly parroted the (Karl) Rovian line that voter fraud is rampant, though studies have found otherwise.

Uncertain that even a Republican-controlled Senate would approve Mr. Spakovsky's nomination to the F.E.C., President Bush gave him a recess appointment to the commission last year....

[david]

"Thus, the Republican Party today has (a) a President who is honest and supportive, and dumb as a brick, and (b) a Vice-President who is intelligent and supportive, but obviously not honest."

There's no reason you have to have two. I've seen no evidence that Cheney is smart.

[wkwillis]

Andres
You do remember that Hillary Rodham Clinton was the Hillary Rodham that was Young Republican when she went off to college?

[jibal]

I'm not at all a fan or supporter of Hillary, but any presidential candidate who says there won't be U.S. troops in Iraq 8 years hence is lying, and anyone who expects that lacks rational judgment.

[jibal]

"a President who is honest and supportive, and dumb as a brick"

Anyone who thinks that George Bush is honest is a whole lot dumber that he is.

[andres]

Hmmm. A left wing troll! Bush and co. did not drive them into extinction after all. But your point is valid enough for me to qualify my statement: GW Bush is honest to a fault in what he believes is right, but he is willing to be ruthlessly dishonest in pursuit of what he believes is right. Hence Iraqui WMD's, the impending default of social security, etc.

By contrast, someone like Cheney is dishonest in what he believes is right, eg being Vice-President for a party that abhors gays and lesbians, including his own daughter. And using the misguided ideals of people like Bush and Wolfowitz to obtain an invasion of Iraq even though all he desires is for Halliburton and cohorts to get their hands on Iraqui oil.

Satisfecho, amigo?