"Lessons? Vietnam, Indonesia, and Iraq" - Immanuel Wallerstein

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Immanuel Wallerstein, (follow the link), if you don't know him already, is too huge to explain here. The professor has written this meditation on Bush's latest jaunt to Vietnam and Indonesia and how those countries experienced American intervention in their lives and how that could show us what to expect in Iraq. It's a bit of a masterpiece, I thought I'd share some of it with you. Someday, somehow, we might learn from experience. DS

Abstract: The ostensible reason the United States fought in Vietnam was to oppose Communism and to make sure that there was no "domino effect" of Communism in Southeast Asia. Well, the Communist Party still rules Vietnam today, and they are actually friendly to the United States. And there was no domino effect. So, why did the United States sacrifice all those lives and financial resources? Maybe it would have made more sense not to have gotten involved in the first place. President Bush proceeded to Indonesia, where he spent a few hours, holed up in a government palace. No motorcades - too dangerous; no staying even one night - too dangerous. So let us review U.S. policy in Indonesia. There, unlike Vietnam, the U.S. intervention was "successful." The CIA helped arrange the overthrow of Sukarno, a leader of the world's "non-aligned" powers - someone the United States felt was too friendly to the Soviet Union. In his place, a rightwing general, Suharto, became the ruler. He promptly engaged in a mass slaughter of the Indonesian Communist Party, the largest in the world outside the states where the Communist Party was the government. Indonesia is also the state with the largest Muslim population in the world. Indonesian Islam has been, by world standards, of a quite "moderate" variety. But after the fall of the secular government of Sukarno, the Indonesian government has felt the need to take account of the political views of Muslim parties. And in Indonesia there has been the "domino" effect that never occurred in Vietnam. Only the domino effect came from the U.S. policy in Iraq. The United States is seen these days by many, possibly most, Indonesian Muslims as an enemy of Islam, and they are very angry. Had there been a motorcade in Jakarta, it probably would have been stoned. So the Secret Service nixed it. So, what lessons should we draw? In 2006, one of the world's few remaining Communist governments is a friend, relatively speaking, of the United States. And the country where we arranged to wipe out the Communist Party is a country in which it is physically dangerous for the U.S. president to set foot. Will the U.S. president who visits Iraq in twenty years get the kind of reception George W. Bush got in Vietnam, or the kind Bush got in Indonesia? READ IT ALL

Palestinians Form Human Shields to Stop Israeli Airstrikes - New York Times

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This story is by far the most significant in the Middle East today, and perhaps in years. The Palestinians are for the first time using the Ghandian method of "Satyagraha", often referred to as passive resistance. Ho Chi Minh once said that if Gandhi had been facing the French he would have abandoned nonviolence in a week. What is true of the French is also true of the Israelis, as the similarities between the struggles of the Palestinians and Algerian independence are obvious. Gandhi himself said of the Palestinians on the occasion of the first intifada in 1938, "I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds." If, instead of the intifadas they had spent the years since 1967, sitting in cafeterias singing "we shall overcome", they would have never even have been recognized as a people. This action by the Palestinians at this particular time could change the situation in the entire Middle East drastically, because the Palestinians have chosen a moment when the world's attention and sympathy are finally focused fully on their sufferings due to Israeli excesses. With the Bush administration crippled and the Democratic congress in total confusion on the Middle East, this was the perfect time to change gears. DS
Abstract: Israel called off airstrikes on the homes of two militants Sunday after hundreds of Palestinians crowded around the buildings forming human shields, a new tactic that forced the Israelis to re-evaluate their aerial campaign in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians began to gather around the homes shortly after the Israeli army ordered occupants out of them. Israel routinely issues such warnings before attacking buildings that it says are used to store weapons, saying it wants to avoid casualties. Instead of leaving the buildings, the homeowners remained inside and were quickly joined by crowds of supporters who gathered on balconies, rooftops and in the streets outside. ''Death to Israel. Death to America,'' the crowds chanted. Local mosques and Palestinian TV and radio stations also mobilized supporters. It was the first time Palestinians have formed human shields to prevent an airstrike. The first incident occurred just before midnight at the home of Mohammedweil Baroud, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. Baroud oversees rocket attacks on Israel. About two hours later, Mohammed Nawajeh, a Hamas leader in northern Gaza, got a similar call. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas arrived at Baroud's home early Sunday to support the protest. ''We are so proud of this national stand. It's the first step toward protecting our homes, the homes of our children,'' Haniyeh said as he made his way to the roof of the house, decorated during the night with black and green flags symbolizing the Popular Resistance Committees and Hamas groups. ''This strategy was decided by our people. This strategy was decided by our leaders who were here from all the factions ... and so long as this strategy is in the interest of our people we support this strategy,'' Haniyeh said. People loyal to various Palestinian factions -- Hamas, Fatah and the Popular Resistance Committees -- which have often fought against each other, answered calls for help, crossing party and ideological lines to fend off the Israeli airstrikes. ''These Palestinian masses have come to defeat the Zionist swords which are targeting our heads and the heads of our fighters,'' said Nizar Rayan, a Hamas leader in northern Gaza. ''Look we are defeating them,'' he added, pointing to Israeli warplanes overhead in the night sky. Redwan Abu Daya, a 16-year-old Fatah supporter who lives near Baroud, said he was ignoring party lines because he felt a duty to protect his neighbor's homes from bombardment. ''I came here because everyone should be here,'' Abu Daya said, while the nearby mosque called on loudspeakers for people to gather at Baroud's home. The army said it called off the nighttime airstrikes because of the large crowds, but vowed to continue to fight the ''terrorist infrastructure.'' It condemned ''the cynical exploitation by the terrorists of uninvolved people as human shields.'' At midday Sunday, crowds continued to protect the targeted homes. READ ALL

Bush Cites Lessons for Iraq in Vietnam - New York Times

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Reading this story I was really struck at how painful the next two years are going to be. How deeply embarrassing not just for Americans, but for nearly everyone. There is an expression in Spanish, "verguenza ajena", which describes the embarrassment you can feel for others: a smiling lady with spinach in her teeth; an after dinner speaker with his fly open. I think if the USA weren't so busy killing and torturing and imprisoning people without trial many people would begin feeling truly sorry for Americans. DS

Abstract: In his first day in the capital of a country that was America’s wartime enemy during his youth, President Bush said today that the American experience in Vietnam contained lessons for the war in Iraq. Chief among them, he said, was that “we’ll succeed unless we quit.” “We tend to want there to be instant success in the world,” Mr. Bush said after a lunch with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, “and the task in Iraq is going to take a while.”(...) the day was filled with jarring imagery. There was Mr. Bush in the palace in the center of this most gracious of Asian cities, being greeted in the former palace of the French governor general of Indochina by President Nguyen Minh Triet. The welcoming ceremony took place in a high-ceilinged, European-style hall dominated by a huge statue of Ho Chi Minh. Mr. Bush sat and chatted with Mr. Triet as Ho’s bearded visage looked over them. Mr. Bush spoke of driving by the lake where Senator John McCain’s plane crashed nearly 40 years ago, focusing less on Mr. McCain’s long imprisonment afterward than on the fact that “he was, literally, saved, in one way, by the people pulling him out.”(...) For Mr. Bush, who had never set foot in Vietnam before, this visit is something of a tightrope walk. America’s defeat here is increasingly being mentioned in comparison with how Iraq may turn out, and Mr. Bush was careful to stress that in Iraq, unlike Vietnam, defeat is not an option for the United States. “The Maliki government is going to make it unless the coalition leaves before they have a chance to make it,” he said of Iraq’s prime minister. “And that’s why I assured the prime minister we’ll get the job done.” In private, some White House officials concede that Mr. Bush’s visit to Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, scheduled many months ago, is proving to be spectacularly poorly timed, because of all the uncomfortable parallels between the two wars. READ IT ALL