Whither Iraq

THEN: "Let's start with one simple fact: Iraq is a black box that has been sealed shut since Saddam came to dominate Iraqi politics in the late 1960's. Therefore, one needs to have a great deal of humility when it comes to predicting what sorts of bats and demons may fly out if the U.S. and its allies remove the lid.

Think of it this way: If and when we take the lid off Iraq, we will find an envelope inside. It will tell us what we have won, and it will say one of two things. It could say, 'Congratulations! You've just won the Arab Germany - a country with enormous human talent, enormous natural resources, but with an evil dictator, whom you've just removed.'

Or the envelope could say, 'You've just won the Arab Yugoslavia - an artificial country congenitally divided among Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Nasserites, leftists, and a host of tribes and clans that can only be held together with a Saddam-like iron fist. Congratulations, you're the new Saddam.'

In the first scenario, Iraq is the way it is today because Saddam is the way he is. In the second scenario, Saddam is the way he is because Iraq is what it is. Those are two very different problems. And we will know which we've won only when we take off the lid.

The conservatives and neocons, who have been pounding the table for war, should be a lot more humble about this question, because they don't know either."

--Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, January 26, 2003


IN HINDSIGHT: "To me, the real intelligence failure was how broken Iraqi society was. It was so much more decimated than the CIA were telling the U.S. government. Those guys had memories of an Iraq of the fifties and sixties, not the Iraq that had been battered by eight years of Iran-Iraq war, Gulf War I, ten years of sanctions, and then an invasion.

I knew this was going to be hard. Believe me, it didn't take any genius to know that. You just needed to have a basic acquaintance with the Middle East and the history of Iraq to know that.

And that's always been my issue with the Bush administration. My issue is not that this isn't important. No, I think it is important. It's important and hard, and they thought that it was important and easy."

--Thomas Friedman in Esquire, December 13, 2005

You haven't really made it until you've got a low-rent stripper masquerading as your ass double...

"...It's a messy movie, often intentionally, often not. And it shows off Keira as we've never seen her: raw, dirty, bad.

Fifteen minutes into the movie, she strips down to her underwear and administers a sweaty lap dance to a room full of Latino gang members, played convincingly by a roomful of actual Latino gang members. Other elements of the scene - Keira's ass for example - are less authentic.

'You have to decide for yourself what you're comfortable with', she says. 'I'm OK with topless, but I won't show my bottom. I used a double. Tony brought in three girls for me to chose from. Before they came into the office, I'm like, How do I act? I decided to be very businesslike. It was hard not to laugh, but I didn't want to offend anyone.

Anyway, they all had very nice bottoms, and I chose one. Then a few weeks ago, I hear about this girl in Vegas claiming to be Keira Knightly's body double. It wasn't her. She wasn't the girl in the movie.'

It's almost cliché by now: You haven't really made it until you've got a low-rent stripper masquerading as your ass double..."

--David Katz

in the United States only Congress can declare wars

Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

[Gilbert: "There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."]

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

-- Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, to interviewer Gustave Gilbert during Easter recess of the Nürremberg trials, 18 April 1946.

You are gods who have forgotten who they are

"You are gods who have forgotten who they are.

You are emperors who have fallen asleep and are dreaming that they have become beggars.

Now beggars are trying to become emperors, in dreams they are making great efforts to become emperors, and all that is needed is to wake up!"

- Osho

Curses that we cast on ourselves

After a reading from his translation of Dante's Inferno, a boy in the audience asked America's former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky what his personal version of hell was.

The poet said that each of us creates our own hell. The fearful and negative interpretations of reality with which we infect our imaginations constitute curses that we cast on ourselves.

They terrify and enslave us so thoroughly that most of the difficult outer circumstances we encounter are mild in comparison.

--Rob Brezsny

The Holy Now

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death.

It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time -- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature -- but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

There is no less holiness at this time -- as you are reading this -- than there was the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Chebar, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of God.

There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. There is no whit less might in heaven or on earth than there was the day Jesus said "Maid, arise" to the centurion's daughter, or the day Peter walked on water, or the night Mohammed flew to heaven on a horse.

In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture.

Purity's time is always now. Purity is no social phenomenon, a cultural thing whose time we have missed, whose generations are dead, so we can only buy Shaker furniture. "Each and every day the Divine Voice issues from Sinai," says the Talmud. Of eternal fulfillment, Tillich said, "If it is not seen in the present, it cannot be seen at all."

--Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

It will be because we destroyed ourselves

"America will never be destroyed from the outside.
If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. "

-- Abraham Lincoln