A.D.
Freudenheim, The Editor
The
U.K. Newspaper The Independent ran
an article yesterday (20 June 2006) about a confidential letter
that was leaked, a letter from the American Ambassador to Iraq,
Zalmay Khalilzad, to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. (The
Independent posted an abridged
text of the letter here.) According to the same article, the
memo âpaints a grim picture of Iraq as a country
disintegrating in which the real rulers are the militias, and
the central government counts for nothing,â
an account âwholly at odds with the optimistic
account of developments given by President George Bush and Tony
Blair.â
This
story has not, as far as I can tell, been widely picked up here
in the U.S. There was an Associated Press article that
ran yesterday afternoon (e.g., in the Boston
Globe here, or ABC
News.com here) â but the AP article claims
that âThe author was not known,â
attempting to neutralize the idea that it actually was from Ambassador
Khalilzad despite being under his name officially. This also received
some coverage in the Washington Post, though it appears
that an article in their âOutlookâ
section â which is mentioned
in other articles â is not yet accessible
online. Other than that, coverage in the U.S. appears slim, as
was noted by the Media
Matters for America site.
***
Indulge
me in a tangent for one minute. Separate and apart from the details
of the memo, all of which certainly seem believable, the contradictory
perspectives on the Iraq situation strike me as covering up a
broader conspiracy, a theory that was tossed around back when
President Bush was so actively falsifying his evidence for war
and trying to terrorize the nation into accepting its necessity.
That conspiracy theory (bolstered by the Presidentâs
use of the word âcrusadeâ)
was that what President Bush really wanted in Iraq was
chaos: he wanted sectarian violence and he wanted a war that would
broaden itself to be perceived as a massive clash of religious
titans â not of Sunni versus Shia, but of Islam
versus Christianity. In other words, this is all part of some
doctrinaire Christian take on the end-of-days and how to provoke
the Second Coming of Christ.
Yes,
ok, itâs far-fetched. I asked for your indulgence.
It is not that I necessarily believe this theory to be true; I
still think that, Presidential denials notwithstanding, this was
a war about oil more than anything else. However, if you start
lining up the details â of how we have bungled
the post-war planning and continued to fail at any substantive
resolution of Iraqâs growing civil strife; how
we have so selectively chosen to support the new regime in Afghanistan
(which is to say: we support the part that can appear easily on
television from Kabul, leaving the poppy-growing majority to go
about their heroin-producing business); how Osama bin Laden was
supposed to be Public Enemy #1, and yet he remains at large; how
President Bush has handled Syria, Iran, and the Palestinians to
date; and so on â it does, sadly, look as though
there is no consistent approach beyond some very hidden ulterior
motive. Our President denounces dictatorships on the one hand
(Iraq under Saddam) while, on the other hand, supporting dictatorships
(Libya); he calls for democracy in Iraq, but leaves Egypt and
Saudi Arabia to move ever-so-slowly in what might (possibly) be
a democratic direction, while also denouncing the democratic choices
made by people in Iran or the occupied Palestinian territories...
I
could go on, but presumably you get the point. Pragmatically,
what is Mr. Bush to do about ALL of these situations? Nothing;
the United States is strong, but we donât have
the military forces to take them on all at once. But from the
perspective of a Christian conspiracy theory, we donât
have to address these all issues at once â all
we have to do is stir the pot enough to create a broader religious
war, a clash of civilizations. Indeed, that seems to be the one
thing at which President Bush and his administration have been
most effective.
***
Update:
The Independent has also
published an
editorial today (21 June 2006) about the leaked memo and the
Iraq situation. (Subscription required
for full text.)