Time for Uncle Sam to Let Go of Iraq's Bike Seat?

Check out this curiously-worded memo by Col. Timothy R. Reese, the chief of the Baghdad Operations Command Advisory Team, MND-B, which has the offhandedly urgent title, "It’s Time for the US to Declare Victory and Go Home."

Among the strange, domestic-themed idioms:

"Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose."

"Iraq is not a country with a history of treating even its welcomed guests well."

"The [Iraqi government and Iraqi Security Forces] will tolerate us as long as they can suckle at Uncle Sam’s bounteous mammary glands."

"The [2008 Security Agreement] outlines a series of gradual steps towards military withdrawal, analogous to a father teaching his kid to ride a bike without training wheels. ... We now have an Iraqi government that has gained its balance and thinks it knows how to ride the bike in the race. And in fact they probably do know how to ride, at least well enough for the road they are on against their current competitors. Our hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground."

To paraphrase Uncle Reese: We should put the cookie jar away because the Iraqi government wants to bake brownies. Iraq pour itself a glass of milk. And even though, in spite of Maliki's efforts to swab it all up with his old college tee-shirt, the government commits milk spills that cost the country enormous amounts of milk money; even though the den is a total mess, the garden is overgrown, and the kids are still fighting over the T.V. remote that is Kirkuk; even though the Sunnis aren't doing their homework, and Sunni hall monitors aren't getting the respect they deserve from those lazy asshole prefects and hall monitors who aren't inviting us to their parties; and even though bullies still roam the halls brandishing AK-47s and setting off bombs, the fact is that our cookies are overcooked, and we're crowding the kitchen terribly.

"Therefore, we should declare our intentions to withdraw all US military forces from Iraq by August 2010," Reese writes. Or, to put it another way: It’s time for the US to declare victory and go home!

I'm sure America's anti-war activists are wringing their hands over this one.

"They need to take responsibility for their country..."

From the Iraqi perspective, here is the view of Barack Obama's first Presidential visit to their country: a man flown in secretly, delivered to Camp Victory “to say thank you to the troops,” and gone in five hours.

I cringed as I read President Obama's rehashed talking points on his Iraq policy, a "responsible" prolonged withdrawal—specifically, I cringed at his patronizing Theys.

"They need to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty," he told U.S. troops in a short speech at a Saddam-era palace in the Green Zone, a section of Baghdad that the U.S. Army captured exactly six years ago. "They have got to make political accommodations. They're going to have to decide that they want to resolve their differences through constitutional means and legal means. They are going to have to focus on providing government services that encourage confidence among their citizens. . . . We can't do it for them."

I have never experienced the humiliation of occupation, but I can say now that I have experienced the humiliation of occupying. Many times before, I have said that the government and people of the United States have a responsibility to improve Iraqis' lives through nonviolent methods. Troop count alone—whether it goes up or down—will never define our progress and our righteousness. And here is President Obama, the new partner, the emblem of a new era, laboring the point of “responsibility" while neglecting the very people for whom we were supposed to have fought this war.

The responsibility to hand over responsibility? Bandied about and buzzing, the word "responsibility" is beginning to remind me of those doomsaying two words of May 2003—words so haunting that you needn't be reminded of them, and so historic that they have their own Wikipedia entry.

Image from The New York Times' Baghdad Bureau blog.

Never forget?

We will never forget Vietnam. We will never forget the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. On October 7 next year, Page One of The New York Times (if there still is a Page One) may even memorialize the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. But today, March 20, 2009, there is no space reserved on the front page for the Iraq War, now beginning its sixth year.

Just as Afghanistan's was the less-important war last year, Iraq's is a low priority this year. As Afghanistan and Pakistan have exploded into the public consciousness, violence in Iraq "has flattened at the lowest level since the war began six years ago." Iraq's provincial elections "took place in a remarkably peaceful climate" (although, at least five candidates were assassinated). The status-of-forces agreement signed by the U.S. and Iraqi governments in late 2008 "will reduce boots on the ground and U.S. influence on Iraqi matters." President Obama has vowed to end combat operations by August 2010. Last month, Obama told the world: "Iraq's future is now its own responsibility."

A year ago today, I wrote on this blog: "The question of American responsibility remains fixed in reality; it always will. Let's proceed with that question on our minds." Even I, in a sense, have moved on: to music, to the war in northern Uganda, to the crisis in Zimbabwe. Like so many others, the recession haunts me like a poltergeist. But I still believe that even after all of our troops leave Iraqi soil two years from now (if all goes according to plan), we as Americans must still consider our responsibility to Iraq. We can work to find secure living situations for the millions of Iraqi refugees; or donate to progressive cultural institutions in the country, like the Iraqi National Library and Archive. We can just read a few great books to learn more about the nation that our nation has invaded and occupied, and to understand the war's historical implications.

I understand that this will be a struggle. This past year has brought so much hope, but there have also been so many dark days. Many of us will forever reserve this day for memories and tears, for the contemplation and recognition of innumerable sacrifices and scars. But for many Americans, recent memory has cast a pall over those of the past.

In the den of Republicanistan, Palin rules

Last night, I joined a team of bleeding-heart liberals to cross into "Republicanistan" and crash a watching party for the New York Young Republican Club at the Houndstooth Pub in Midtown. I had pretty low expectations for the Vice-Presidential debate after reading Jack Shafer's primer and I expected to lose composure at some point and blow our cover. In the end, the experience was not nearly as infuriating as it was surreal and depressing.

The debate began shortly after our team downed some Jagger shots and briefly chatted up the well-dressed, 30-something technocrats sipping cocktails in the bar's dimly lit basement space. Watching the debate on FOX News, I whooped and hollered on cue for the first half, simultaneously trying to keep up the act and focus on the actual words of the candidates. I got the impression, though, that us city-dwellers weren't the intended audience. With Palin's cornpone talk and Biden's invitations to visit his working class home town, they clearly were trying to court the small-town "Main Streeters" of America's battleground states.

Both of them put up a pretty good fight, but I don't think either of them came out particularly victorious. But Palin's getting a lot of credit for not doing anything extremely stupid. As the NY Times notes, “She succeeded by not failing in any obvious way.” For me, Palin proved to have the most memorable comments.

Early on, with total lack of irony, she parroted Barack Obama's platform of change: "I do respect [Biden's] years in the U.S. Senate, but I think that Americans are craving something new and different and that new energy and that new commitment that’s going to come with reform,” she said. “I think that’s why we need to send the maverick from the Senate and put him in the White House, and I’m happy to join him there.”

Later, she repeated McCain's economic policy: a key to economic stability is cutting excessive government spending. Clearly, the Republican ticket wants it both ways, since they simultaneously plan to continue the War in Iraq, which is estimated to cost $2 billion a week.

She proceeded to lambaste Barack Obama for not supporting the so-called surge that, she said, "has proven to work." McCain did the same thing in last Friday's Presidential debate. The weird thing is that, in fact, the surge has proven not to work. Let's not forget that America started the surge in 2007 to make "breathing space" to build a viable Iraqi government. When he unveiled the plan, President Bush said that, "over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad's residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas."

But has the Iraqi government made any progress? No. Iraq's parliament is just as fractious, corrupt and unreliable as it was over a year ago. Recently, an Iraqi journalist for McClatchy newspapers named Laith wrote that, over a year into the surge, most Iraqis still have no faith in their government: "All the Iraqis realized that our political parties don't care about us and that money and power are their only concern. We just wait for the last day of the age of this failure government and parliament. Until that day; those people means nothing to us but a thorn in the heart of Iraq that casues pain and bleeding."

Experts credit the "Sons of Iraq," who turned against Al Qaida in Iraq and joined forces with the US military, for bringing down the violence. They also note that Muqtada al-Sadr brought down the violence when he enacted the Mahdi Army cease-fire. But according to this transcript, Palin never even mentioned the words "Anbar" or "Mahdi" (although she did say the word "maverick" 15 times) during the debate. At any rate, there are signs that the peace is about to crumble again into sectarian conflict and political infighting. [Lunch break is almost over: I'll have to post a blizzard of hyperlinks later.]

My carefree whooping came to a halt when Palin declared, "Now, Barack Obama had said that all we're doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians. And such a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment, again, hurts our cause. That's not what we're doing there. We're fighting terrorists, and we're securing democracy, and we're building schools for children there so that there is opportunity in that country, also. There will be a big difference there, and we will win in -- in Afghanistan, also." I could no longer cheer for such inaccurate and preposterous acts of rhetorical gymnastics.

This marked a turning point in the debate, after which everything got progressively more disturbing. At one point, Palin made a crack about Biden's late wife, once a schoolteacher. "You mentioned education and I'm glad you did," she told Biden. "I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?" To that, the Young Republicans cheered.

I dwell on Sarah Palin here because she is a dangerous campaign tool who has trivialized the election. Lately, I've wondered if there is a medieval demon-impostor I can compare her to. Over e-mail today, I brought the question to my mom, an expert on Rennaissance literature. She had a fascinating and insightful response:

I’m more familiar with early modern imagery . . . But in both periods, you have two strands: either religious imagery of anti-Christ figures/ female monsters or secular imagery of folksy, secular Robin Hood heroes. Most of the folksy lore pits “haughty and wealthy elites” against “the folk,” “the many-headed monster” of the peasantry. Robin Hood lore is rich in the early modern period, but what you see is either 1) that the aristocrats were right all along to fear the vulgar, rough peasants who would wheedle their way into high places of authority or 2) that the rough peasant is a hero, by overthrowing an always corrupt or inept aristocracy.

The female monster tradition is probably the tradition that best characterizes the current situation, but it is viciously misogynistic. It draws upon the “lipstick on a pig” metaphor—you may see a beautiful appearance, and you may be captivated and charmed, but this woman is really the whore of Babylon, and will lead you to Hell. Or worse, she is a pig.

The problem --for thoughtful people-- with this literary tradition is that there’s no position to occupy to critique the folksy hero—except to take the side of the haughty elites. You are either folksy, vulgar and peasant OR you are an aristocrat who holds yourself high above the lowly, little people. There’s no way to critique the false posturing of the peasants who would rise to power without validating the aristocrats.

Basically, Sarah Palin is drawing upon this whole tradition—and the polarization works in her favor— as have the Republicans and the red state/blue state distinction for the past 8 years. This distinction serves a figure like Sarah Palin very well—because it distracts both red state and blue state believers from the contradictions within these categories. Red Staters will not critique Sarah Palin, because she “stands for” their resentment of the elite, Washington insiders, and everything you want to associate with them. Whether she is qualified for the position is irrelevant—her genuine, authenticity as a folksy outsider is all the qualification she needs.

Check out these lyrics by Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Red, White and Blue” from their Vicious Cycle CD, produced in –you guessed it—the big year for political music, 2003. And a performance-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26vYdayusrU Here’s the Sarah Palin anthem if there ever was one.

But where would Lynyrd Skynyd be without plastic LA friends and music producers?????? Indeed, this positioning is pretty dishonest.

Love,

Mom

"Red White And Blue"

We don't have no plastic L.A. Frynds,
ain't on the edge of no popular trend.
Ain't never seen the inside of that magazine GQ.
We don't care if you 're a lawyer, or a texas oil man,
or some waitress busting ass in some liquor stand.
If you got Soul
We hang out with people just like you

My hair's turning white,
my neck's always been red,
my collar's still blue,
we've always been here just trying to sing the truth to you.
Yes you could say we've always been, Red, White, and Blue

Ride our own bikes To Sturgis
we pay our own dues,
smoking camels, drinking domestic BREWS
You want to know where I have been
just look at my hands
Yeah, I've driven by the White House,
Spent some time in jail.
Momma cried but she still wouldn't pay my bail.
I ain't been no angel,
But even God, he understands.

My hair's turning white,
my neck's always been red,
my collar's still blue,
we've always been here
just trying to sing the truth to you.
Yes you could say
we've always been, Red, White, and Blue

Yeah that's right!

My Daddy worked hard, and so have I,
paid our taxes and gave our lives
to serve this great country
so what are they complaining about

Yeah we love our families, we love our kids
you know it is love that makes us all so rich
That's where were at,
If they don't like it they can justget the HELL out!

Yeah!

My hair's turning white,
my neck's always been red,
my collar's still blue,
we've always been here
just trying to sing the truth to you.
Yes you could say
we've always been,
Red, White, and Blue

oh..oh..Red, White, and Blue....
Red, White, and Blue
oh..oh....Red, White, and Blue

Palin portrait courtesy the Alaskan government.

Post-Surge Iraq - America's "House of Cards"

Last night, NY Times reporter Dexter Filkins read from his new book, The Forever War, and led a Q&A session that proved rather inconclusive. In his white dress shirt and blue blazer, he looked nothing like the haggard man pictured in his recent NY Times Magazine article "My Long War," but he had the classic nonchalant air and beaten-up face of a war journalist, and his diction was loaded with military lingo. He smiled and chuckled a lot. "I'm totally nervous," he said, about doing the night's event. "I'd rather be shot at with a 50 caliber machine gun."

Filkins is the "death wish" type of journalist who races through battle zones unfazed and wins the good graces of Marines and media critics alike for his down 'n' dirty reporting. His book looks O.K. – it’s a collection of stark and/or action-packed personal accounts of Afghanistan in the late ’90s, the Sept. 11th attacks, and the early years of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. I've only gotten through the first couple chapters (busy with other books), but already a vehicle, several buildings and a head have exploded into oblivion; a hand has gotten chopped off during a public execution at a soccer stadium; and the tragic fate of some child soldiers who worked for the Northern Alliance has been poetically alluded to. I can tell already that this isn't going to be another Taliban, Assassins' Gate, Night Draws Near, or No True Glory. Filkins doesn't have the sharpest intellect, but he can make sense of chaos and horror with a nearly photographic sense, and that's where his book is strong. "It's just stuff that I saw," he explained. "It's representative of my experience."

He just got back from Iraq last Friday. During the Q&A, he said that Iraq is really peaceful now. "The gains are real," he said. But he referred to the country aptly as a "kaleidoscope," and said that it's a "fool's game" to predict what might happen there in the future.

He shied away from opining on the situation, but he suggested that all of this success would amount to little if we withdrew from Iraq in a year. The most elucidating point came when an Iraqi man Filkins apparently knew pressed him on the rivalry between the "Sons of Iraq" - the Sunni fighters and tribal leaders allied against Al Qaida in Iraq, who are famous for bringing down the violence - and the Shi'i-led government. If Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki continues to marginalize the Sunnis (Maliki recently said that he plans to incorporate only 20% of them into the Iraqi Army), won't Iraq eventually devolve into sectarian conflict again?

Filkins had an ominous retort. With the "Anbar Awakening," the United States built an immense "house of cards," he said. “And, you know, a house of cards is better than no house at all.”

“Is it gonna last? Who knows?” he added. “Stay tuned.”

Throw-Down - The Experts Go Head to Head Over Iraqi Nationhood

I sit here in the computer lab, writing a paper on forms of Iraqi nationalism after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. Basically, the whole establishment is here and it's a throw-down. Reinhard Schulze says there's nothing innately "Western" about nationalism and civil rights. Yitzhak Nakash says that the Ottoman's attempts to smash tribal affiliations in the late 19th century created the conditions in the south for widespread tribal conversions to Shi'i Islam. Hanna Batatu says that Iraq's problems after the British anointed Faisal as King of Iraq weren't religious or ethnic, but economic, which is why the Communists had it right all along!

I can't find a picture of the I.C.P.'s legendary secretary general, Fahd, but I can give you a list of some books you might want to check out if, all of a sudden, you start asking yourself, "Why did the British throw these three provinces together as a mandate, anyway? Did they secure for Iraq an inevitable future of fractious nationhood and, eventually, civil war?"

A Modern History of the Islamic World (2000), by Reinhard Schulze, tracks the major events of history in the far-reaching Islamic world and discusses the "secular" and "Islamic" divide, not as the essential and irreconcilable differences between two certain peoples, but as political ideologies. My Islamic history professor once referred to it as "the Bible" of modern Islamic studies.

The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (1979), by Hanna Batatu, offers an enormously-detailed history of Iraq's social elites during the Ottoman period; its nationalist, communist, socialist and Ba'thi revolutionary movements after the Brits took over Iraq as a mandate; and the process of Iraq's industrialization and modernization. It's a fun and fascinating read and a critical resource.

The Shi'is of Iraq (1995), by Yitzhak Nakash, documents the evolution of Shi'i Islam in the south and central parts of Iraq, beginning in the late 18th century, when tribes flooded into the "frontier" after being chased out of Arabia by Wahhabi warriors. An important resource on the country's largest religious group.

The Marsh Arabs (1964), by Wilfred Thesiger, is about one Briton's adventures in the reed-strewn marshlands of southern Iraq, full of details on plant and animal-life and one view on how industrialization almost completely destroyed the ways of the tribes. Another fun and fascinating resource, for adventurer and book-worm alike.

Republic of Fear (1989), by Kanan Makiya, about Saddam Hussein's Panopticon of a government system. Due to his controversial (and occasionally outrageous) views, Makiya is something of a media darling; his book has been more-or-less canonized on the home-front. It's no more important than the rest of these books, but it certainly beats all of the other readings on just how bad Saddam was.

Iraq Talk in Congress - "Blah, blah, blah..."

General Petraeus: man of the hour! Photo by Charlie Archambault, from USN&WR.

Today's Congressional testimony delivered by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker served as a good refresher for the people that didn't pay attention to even a shred of last month's coverage on the Iraq war.

Now it looks official that Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (which by all accounts appears far more effective, organized and disciplined than Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's mostly S.I.I.C.-allied Iraqi Army), along with a myriad of other militias, will furthermore be crammed into a nominal catch-phrase: "Special Groups." Needless to say, this is sure to make the endless hunt for "bad guys" all the more confusing.

Update, 4/10, 12:34 p.m. - I should probably consider Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki responsible for the Iraq Army, huh? At the moment I couldn't really tell you how S.I.I.C.'s armed wing, the Badr Organization, fits into the whole "special groups" vs. Iraq Army thing - whether they're a "special group" or serial infiltrators (and, judging by the news coverage surrounding the latest bout of fighting in Basra, serial deserters) of the Army. I'm guessing that they're both...

11:29 p.m.

Bush speaks!

And the war's critics put the pressure on him.

"The president has taken us into a failed war, he's taken us deeply into debt and that debt is taking us into recession," said Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, according to BBC. "We need some answers from the president."

That Darn Memo

The storied 81-page memo that outlined our government's legal justification for abusing prisoners, written by John C. Yoo, a former deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, has finally been declassified. I haven't yet read the thing in full. But judging from what I've read so far, it's apparent that Yoo's memo uses the kind of malleable, vague, paranoid thinking that the Bush Administration has employed to justify all of its other crimes.

But I'm still waiting for the answer to the million-dollar question: Who truly deserves the credit for conjuring up the philosophy behind our torture program, the Bush Administration, Yoo, or the creators of 24?

There's more on the memo at Slate and elsewhere.

Double Trouble - New Music + Imaginative Solutions

These articles appear in next Tuesday's issue of New School Free Press

Music: Portland Bruising

The New Bloods
"The Secret Life" (Kill Rock Stars)

In an age of effects-drenched overdubs, reverberated howls, and quasi-hippie sing-a-longs—all of which falling under the umbrella term "freak folk"—the New Bloods sideswipe you with a stripped-down jolt of catharsis. "The Secret Life," the New Bloods' debut full-length album, is all sawing fiddle, creative drum beats, rubbery bass, and dissonant vocal harmonies, cast in a blanket of recorded-in-basement production quality. Sometimes, the band follows meandering grooves with high murmurs and monologues. Other points are arresting and confrontational. In the title track, over a cascade of tom-toms and a dramatic fiddle line, one of them sings, "Sadness and jealous and every insecurity/Why don't you believe in me, why don't you believe in me?"

It sounds as though the auras of Bascom Lamar Lunsford, The Supremes and Erase Errata have awoken inside these three women from Portland, Oregon. Such a radical deviation from that tiresome "genre" idea is a promising sign for future things to come.

Five Years in Iraq: Imaginative Solutions, Anyone?

When we look at the Iraq War, we gaze into our own reflections. Six thousand miles away, our intolerance, our ignorance, our arrogance and most of our other sins are taken to their logical conclusions. I find solace in the fact that I also see the logical conclusion of our virtues: determination, sacrifice and hope.

Just look at the Iraqi journalists who work for major U.S. newspapers, many of whom have about as much experience in journalism as the average college intern. But they risk their lives every single day and endure the distrust of Americans and fellow Iraqis, so we can have access to accurate information at our luxury. Their selfless duty brings up an important question: How should Americans who call for peace help Iraqis who, in the face of inescapable danger, try to build a peaceful Iraq?

The answer lies not in total withdrawal, nor in more so-called surges. The question of troop count, I think, tends to miss the point. Our armed forces will leave sooner or later, but the civil war will not cease. Thousands of miles of concrete blast barriers will not disappear. Basic services, like plumbing and electricity, will not immediately be restored. Remember that everyone who has died in Iraq has left a survivor—a father and a mother, siblings, even children. Their memories of the American occupation will not fade away, just because America finally decided to give up.

The onus to improve Iraqis' lives, in large part, belongs to us. Let's begin a serious public dialogue about responsibility, in order to produce imaginative, non-violent ways to help Iraqis rebuild their country.

Union Square Today - The Broken Chain, Peacealujah, The Upcoming Vigil, and Feathers in the Sky

The Broken Chain

Yesterday, I hear that at noon today, a human chain will form along 14th Street in Manhattan from "River to River." I get to the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue at 12:10 p.m. today and the human chain has hardly taken form.

By the time I decide to get some food, my first meal of the day, the people lining 14th Street get closer together and join hands. I don't want to miss the march of the human chain. I walk off the sidewalk and into an imaginary corridor - defined by the curb and a series of metal gates manned by police.

Between 5th and 6th Avenues, I offer my hand to a man, Gary, who stands at the tip of a line that stretched to the end of the block. I then join hands with Bob, his dad, who suddenly walks up to join the group. We wait a while and chat. A P.A. system set up down the block blares "Give Peace a Chance." We let go of each other's grasps, and a few minutes later we rejoin hands. The line contracts and stretches. Sometimes the line stretches so far that we struggle to stay together.

Finally, the human chain begins the march. But we are told by the organizers that we should do so in walking formation, not as a human chain. I feel disappointed but immediately my attention is stirred by Elizabeth Adam, an older woman who mentions her distaste for the New School's ambition to replace 65 5th Avenue with a state-of-the-art, 18-story "flagship" building, which currently is slated to look like a gigantic shimmering block of windows.

Adam tells me that she is a neighborhood activist who is trying to put a stop to development efforts like these. What about the vermin invasion? What about all the new students? The neighborhood won't be able to handle it. "The Village is under siege," she says.

"NYU's even worse and the students are even worse," she continues. Every day, they're crowding the sidewalks, smoking cigarettes, yakking on their cell phones. They never get out of the way. "I have to say 'Excuse me' three or four times."

She has no problem with education, or with universities, she says. She has a problem with the fact that the New School and NYU can't provide for their students. She tells me: "Give them a place to stand."

We walk into Union Square, now totally packed with people, and Elizabeth sees a friend. They embrace and Elizabeth brings up the New School's soon-to-be flagship. "We don't want that building," the other woman says. I tell them that I'm off to find some food, but instead I just wander around Union Square awhile.

Peacealujah

People have set up little tables to sell kitsch. I see some pins made of origami animals. "Feel free to touch them, to fondle them," Jeremy, a black guy wearing a leather jacket and a frog origami earring on his left ear, tells me. The animals are made of "gift paper, origami paper, wall paper," and they are dipped in polyurethane.

"You're a cutie," he adds. I say goodbye and amble to the band nearby, three kids in their twenties playing banjo, mandolin and spoons.

I cut through the center-square to scope out the 9/11-truth placards underneath the statue of George Washington. On my way, a crowd chants, "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!" When they say "Peace!" a homeless man with long hair, smoking a cigarette, says "Work." When they say "Now!" he says "Jobs."

I somehow make my way back to the southwest corner of Union Square, where I began. There appears in the congregation a tall man with a big, waxed, Elvis-like coif, who is wearing a stark white suit, a black shirt and black gloves underneath, and a white reverend's collar. He holds a giant, white, acoustic megaphone. It's Reverend Billy!

He inches his way through through the mass of people. I begin to follow him. I meet up with Sam Lewis, photo editor of the New School Free Press, and simultaneously run into Kate Goff, a member of the Lang Student Union, and urge them to pursue Reverend Billy with me. We make it to the southeast corner when I buttonhole the man - and notice that he's got a tiny branch of purple berries in his buttonhole.

The Reverend is a large man. He has a square forehead, clear blue eyes and a strong jaw. He gives a striking, pointed stare, occasionally adding some flair of mannerism. Earlier today, The Church of Stop Shopping and Reverend Billy had just been kicked out of the Auto Show, going on at the Javits Center uptown.

"Amen, Hallelujah," he says. "I think we were able to spread the word about our dependence on gas and oil. Our love affair with the automobile must end. But now, coming down to this march here is like the second foot coming down. Our addiction to fossil fuels and the automobile has everything to do with this war."

"Is there anything you have planned, you know, for the next step down?" I ask.

"Well, we won't step down until we have the peace. We're involved now in a momentum. There's a money momentum. Most Americans want to get out of the war and have been for some time, but the momentum of the war is just going forward. The oil companies, the big construction companies, the supply companies. There's a money decision that's being made that isn't democratic."

His brief talk, as direct and driving as a steamroller, is ominously uncertain. "The average American has common sense now about Iraq. We're not saying Saddam flew those planes into the towers anymore. We're not saying that. But, yet, until at least the end of Bush's eight years, it seems that there is no way to curtail this colonial war. I hope we're learning a lesson here, because as you and I are talking right now, innocent people are dying."

"Peacealujah. That's all I can say." He puts his megaphone to his mouth: "Peacealujah, children." He repeats, "Peacealujah!" He drifts into the throng, calling, "Peacealujah."

The Upcoming Vigil

In front of Babies 'R' Us, sandwiched between other protesters, Sam and I see a group waving Tibetan flags, blue and red stripes with a yellow sun, a white mountain and two fearless snow lions. There's a march now, but only a couple blocks up the street.

On a tiny stage on 17th Street, Leslie Kielson, the New York Coordinator of United Peace and Justice, holds up a 8 1/2 x 11" sheet of paper titled, "Traer A Las Tropas A Casa Amara," which in Spanish roughly means, "Bring the troops home." On her sheet, there are three photos of a youngish Latino man, including a family photo. The woman tells us over the P.A. that when she rings the bells, we will share a few minutes of silence. A string of bells chime out.

No one is speaking. Everything is still. Several people hold up sheets of paper that also say, "Traer A Las Tropas A Casa Amara." But they have different pictures on them. One man holds up a skateboard. A giant pink baloon on a stick flutters in the air.

The silence is only broken by the distant call of a zealot: "9/11 was an inside job!"

A recording of "Taps" comes on over the P.A. system. Then a middle-aged woman with golden-blond hair takes the microphone and sings a slow, beautiful song. Some sing along. A woman with a small drum around her neck puts up her drumsticks in a V shape. She is crying. Nearby, a mock coffin draped with an American and an Iraqi flag sits on the ground.

The woman comes back on the P.A. "Probably in the next couple of days, the four-thousandth soldier will die," she says. A candlelight vigil in Union Square is planned for sometime before the end of the month.

"Together, we can end this war," she continues. "Think of something we can do every single day. Let's do everything in our power. ... Hopefully we will not be here next year."

Feathers in the Sky

It's probably after two o'clock and I still haven't eaten. I split up with Sam, happen into a walking-conversation over to Washington Square with a reporter from Agence France-Presse (he wasn't on "super-fast" deadline but he still beat me by over two hours), make my way back uptown and finally to 6 and 12 on 11th Street and 6th Avenue. I eat, then call my roommate Ryan, who had just been at a Tibet rally uptown. Now he's in Union Square, watching a humongous pillow fight.

I walk past a swarm of thousands of people, old, young, colorfully dressed, or wearing pajamas - bigger, I think, than the turn-out of the rally - and find Ryan perked on a tall ledge at the southeast end of Union Square. I stand up onto the ledge. He warns me about the blond woman behind us, who is warding off anybody that attempts to stomp on the grass. We turn to see her tell some kids off, then turn to what everyone is staring at out the windows of Filene's Basement and Whole Foods: an indecipherable mash of hundreds of people whipping around feather pillows.

Men are walking into the melee shirtless. A guy bursts from the mob donning a big motorcycle helmet. Feathers are flying around, sticking to jackets, shirts, hair. Big puffs of feather get whipped around by wind and float into the air. Bits of feather get carried into the sky and fly away.

What, I wonder, does this have to do with the war in Iraq? Ryan, too, is perplexed about how this is meant to commemorate the war. Nevertheless, this seems like an important, even historic moment. After about forty minutes, I go home. Only then do I find out that today is International Pillow Fight Day.

Photos by Sam Lewis.

Five Years Later

Posted March 20, 2008

We've hit the 5-year mark. This week, the politicians, the ex-politicians, the hawks and the doves are having at all of the should haves, could haves and would haves. Most of the stuff I read settled on the conclusion that we made some stupid-ass mistakes and fucked everything up, but at least we took out Saddam. There were a lot of anti-war protests going on yesterday, but many still think we should continue the fight.

In a speech at the Pentagon yesterday, President Bush said the surge is definitely working. "Because we acted the world is better and the United States of America is safer," he said. "The gains we've made are fragile and irreversible, but on this anniversary, the American people should know that since the surge began, the level of violence is significantly down, civilian deaths are down, sectarian killings are down." This success, he added, has made the war worth the "high cost in lives and treasure."

On Tuesday, V.P. Dick Cheney visited Baghdad and declared that, “If you reflect back on those five years, I think it’s been a difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavor.” He added that, "it's been well worth the effort." He forgot to mention that the war has been extremely deadly. The day earlier, 50 miles to his south, 43 civilians were killed and 58 injured in a bombing near the shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala.

Yesterday, on "Inside Iraq," a blog written by Iraqi journalists who work for McClatchy Newspapers, Correspondent Jenan shared his thoughts. Five years ago, he wrote, "I had big dreams, large hopes of salvation from what we were live with Saddam regime." But, "I discovered that I was deceived and now I believe the old saying 'the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don’t know'"

Last Sunday, the New York Times presented us with an op-ed collection of experts who muse about "one aspect of the war that most surprised them or that they wished they had considered in the prewar debate." L. Paul Bremer III, the former envoy to Iraq, acted as though he was more of an observer and less of a high-level bureaucrat who wielded utmost authority: "Our soldiers were magnificent in liberating Iraq. But after arriving in the country, I saw that the American government was not adequately prepared to deal with the growing security threats." Check out the piece the Times ran the next day. Days into Bremer's service, he and his top deputy rammed through their grandiosely stupid bill to dissolve the Iraq Army despite the fact that a plan already existed to incorporate the army into the newly occupied Iraq. Most people these days think of this policy error as the main reason those "growing security threats" grew so quickly.

Slate is a little more aggressive than the Times with the wording of their 5-years-on coverage, posing a blunt question to the liberal hawks, folks like Jeffrey Goldberg and columnist Fred Kaplan: "Why did we get it wrong?"

Kanan Makiya - the author of Republic of Fear, who in 2002 told President Bush, V.P. Cheney, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that "Iraqis would greet Americans with sweets and flowers" and who, on the night of Saddam's overthrow, sat in the Oval Office and wept - wrote on Slate that he "underestimated the self-centeredness and sectarianism" of people like his pal Ahmad Chalabi, another prominent Iraqi exile and leader of the Iraqi National Congress. In The Assassins' Gate, journalist George Packer depicts Chalabi as a wealthy, smooth-talking charlatan. But Makiya had the wacky vision that Chalabi could lead the vanguard of a new, democratic Iraq. On Slate, Makiya wrote that he underestimated a lot of things and has plenty of regrets. But, "I still do not know how to regret wanting to knock down the walls of the great concentration camp that was Saddam Hussein's Iraq." He asked a bunch of questions. He even ended on one.

Top conservatives at the Weekly Standard seem crestfallen, if still defensive.

Influential editor William Kristol, who even through the worst has remained the staunchest Iraq war supporter of all, brought up the very reason we went to war in the first place: the threat of WMDs. A Defense Department analysis of 600,000 Iraqi government documents recently, it concludes, "found no 'smoking gun' (i.e. direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda." After a flurry of news reports based on this damning quote from the report, Kristol wrote, "the Bush administration reacted with an apparently guilty silence." He proceeds to accuse the report's executive summary of being "extraordinarily misleading."

Jules Crittenden, an editor for the Boston Herald who was embedded with the troops during the first push into Baghdad, wrote in the perfunctory "Five Years On" piece that the Iraq war is but a chapter in our fight against terrorism. But, "In fact, all we've managed to do as a nation over six-and-a-half years of war is confuse ourselves."

The most on-the-mark piece I saw came from Christopher Hitchens, the cantankerous Vanity Fair columnist and liberal-hawk. On Slate, he took the long historical view and outlines America's deeply unsettling - deeply, deeply unsettling - foreign policy relationship with Iraq's Ba'th Party and Saddam Hussein.

If you take all that into account, Hitchens suggests, the war - including the overthrow of Saddam, the elections, the recuperation of the devastated marshlands in the south of Iraq, and the "battlefield defeat inflicted on al-Qaida and its surrogates" - actually looks like the best moral option. "March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we ever decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons. This must, and still does, count for something." Hitchens has a point. It counts for something. It's just too bad that, every year, that something will grow progressively more insignificant in the face of continuing bloodshed.

There are lots of short pieces by NY Times reporters and photographers on their blog "Baghdad Bureau." Ian Fisher writes about a newfound optimism among the troops, a result of the so-called surge. Sgt. First Class Donal Muthena, from the Third Infantry Division, tells him, "This time, all my vets say the same thing: This is the most satisfying deployment we have been on."

Many people aren't convinced. Anti-war demonstrations went down yesterday in "Washington and Elsewhere," the NY Times announced early yesterday. The Washington Post reported that even their own offices were a target. In the capitol, there were some incredible demonstrations. About 100 people froze in place for ten minutes at Union Station. 60 or so members of Code Pink carried a "living-room size copy of the preamble to the Constitution" down Constitution Avenue. And in the city, as I was writing this, a MoveOn.org candlelight vigil was held in Madison Square Park.

The dark question still lingers in me about what we should do in Iraq in the future. What is, truly, the American responsibility? We can't just leave - even if the troops are gone, those HESCO housing containers and concrete blast barriers, plus the biggest U.S. Embassy in the world, won't just disappear. And the civil war will evolve and grow. Whenever I think of the possibility of an immediate withdrawal, what Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker told the NY Times last July comes to mind: “In the States, it’s like we’re in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we’re done here, and the credits come up, and the lights come on, and we leave the theater and go on to something else. ... Whereas out here, you’re just getting into the first reel of five reels, and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four and a half are going to be way, way worse.”

Kanan Makiya has a point. I'm beginning to find that, more often than not, the debate over the war ultimately returns to the pursuit of new and different questions. We all see that escape might prove to be just as amoral an option as invasion. The question of American responsibility remains fixed in reality; it always will. Let's proceed with that question on our minds.

Photo: Standing on a lightbox in front of the IRS building in Washington, D.C. By Jacob Cunningham, courtesy United For Peace.

Blackwater Out of Potrero

Victory!

For many months the community of Potrero has protested the ambitions of Blackwater, the company that serves as one of the major American contractors in Iraq, to build an 842-acre facility in Potrero, California. Today, the community was surprised to learn that Blackwater decided to dump the project.

Brian Bonfiglio, Vice President of Blackwater West, wrote to them. I saw the letter coming as a pdf from a mass SDCPJ e-mail. I don't know how to link pdfs to this site but this article misquotes Bonfiglio's statement by a tad: “Although our project would have brought a great benefit to San Diego County -- providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with access to low-cost superior training facilities while bringing much-needed jobs to the area -- the proposed site plan simply does not meet our business objectives at this time.”

“It's great news for the community of Potrero,” said Carl Meyer, the Potrero planning committee's new chairman, according to the San Diego Union Tribune. “I think Potrero will start to rejoice tonight. We'll have a party.”

Oui? Moi aussi! Nous faisons une fête chez moi samedi!

Eskander Vs. Makiya, Pt. 2

I've been away from email, but I just came across John Gravois' second piece about the controversy surrounding Baath Party documents recently whisked off to a conservative think-tank in California.

75 Years After the Birth of the University in Exile, Endangered Scholars Speak at the New School

Exiled scholars and political activists from Iraq, Iran and Ethiopia spoke at a panel discussion in Tishman Auditorium last Thursday, part of a lecture series that commemorates the 75th Anniversary of the New School's University in Exile.

The University in Exile was founded as the graduate division of the New School for Social Research in 1933 by Alvin Johnson, the New School's first president, to provide a safe haven for European scholars like Hannnah Arendt, Leo Strauss and Erich Fromm, whose PhDs were revoked by the Nazi party.

NSSR Dean Michael Schober announced at the beginning of the talk that Henry H. Arnhold, a member of the university's board of trustees, recently offered a donation that will fund a three-year Scholar in Residence Program, in partnership with the Scholar Rescue Fund, to hire scholars who have been persecuted by their native countries.

Schober declined to give the sum of Arnhold's grant after the presentation, but added that it was not "in the millions."

The speakers recounted doing work in the trying, often terrifying, atmosphere of their homelands.

The first was Mehrangiz Kar, a woman who worked as a lawyer for 21 years in Iranian courtrooms governed by Islamic religious laws, known as Sharia. She is the author of several books, including her memoir, Crossing the Red Line: The Struggle for Human Rights in Iran, and has worked as a journalist for reformist publications.

"By [Iran's] Constitution," she said, "every door to reform is closed."

In 2000, after she returned from a conference in Berlin, the Iranian government threw her in solitary confinement for two months, charging her with "acting against national security," "insulting Islamic values," and violating the "Islamic dress code." Two months after they released her, the police imprisoned her husband, the journalist Siamak Pourzand, for several months and tortured him.

After his release, he stayed in Iran to get medical help, while Kar received treatment for breast cancer in the United States. She has lived here since 2002.

Donny George Youkhanna, the third speaker, served as the Director of the National Museum in Baghdad until the summer of 2006. At the National Museum, he worked with the U.S. military and a short-lived 1,400-man Special Antiquities Task Force to help retrieve 15,000 ancient artifacts that were stolen from the museum and from Iraq's 12,500 archeological sites during the rampant looting after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The stolen items included statues, vases, cuneiform tablets, and antiquities that date back 6,000 years. According to the F.B.I., between 7 and 10 thousand items are still missing.

Youkhanna had high hopes for the American overthrow of Iraq's former President, Saddam Hussein. "I started thinking that, 'Yes, we will be more free,'" he said.

But as an English-speaking Christian, his family became a target of sectarian antagonism.

In 2006, his fifteen-year-old son received a death threat in the mail, accusing him of insulting Islam and making inappropriate comments to Muslim girls, and his father of working with the United States. After Youkhanna whisked his family off to Syria for their safety, he returned to continue his work. But the Minister of the State Board of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage revoked all of Youkhanna's executive authority, who at the time held the deputy ministerial position. "I could not spend one dinar," he said.

He soon retired, took a job offer from the University of Stony Brook and moved his family to New York.

Asked during the Q&A session about what should be done to preserve Iraq's antiquities and cultural heritage, he said that this effort would be very challenging. He noted that Iraq's national symphony orchestra, the first of its kind in the Middle East, has lately performed only at secret locations.

The final speaker was Berhanu Nega, a NSSR alumnus and the International Scholar in Residence in Economics at Bucknell University. Nega is a prominent member of Ethiopia's pro-democracy movement and the mayor-elect of Ethiopia's capitol, Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia's ruling party, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, derailed the democratic elections of May 2005. Nega never assumed his mayoral post because the government arrested him and threw him in jail and charged him with treason, he said, along with between 30,000 and 50,000 other activists, politicians and journalists.

A prolonged trial sentenced Nega and 37 other opposition leaders to life in prison, but the Ethiopian government suddenly released them in July. Nega has been in the United States since September.

Ethiopia is a key partner in the War on Terror and, according to USA Today, has received nearly $20 million in American military aid since 2002. Nega is a fervent critic of U.S. foreign policy.

Asked about the Presidential elections during the reception after the event, Nega put his right hand up, crossed his fingers, and said that he is rooting for Barack Obama.

This article appears in next Tuesday's issue of the New School Free Press.

Iraq's Top Archivist to Kanan Makiya: Stop, Thief!

Some of you may remember reading last summer's Q & A with Kanan Makiya, when he described how, after the 2003 invasion, he pilfered a treasure-trove of interior Baath Party documents from the abandoned regional headquarters building in Baghdad. These documents form the bedrock of the Iraq Memory Foundation, a private nonprofit organization that is trying to build a memorial site in the style of the Holocaust Memorial Museum at the site of the Crossed Swords in Baghdad. At the time of the interview, it didn't strike me that these were stolen documents and belonged not to Makiya's organization, but to the people of Iraq.

Last week, the notoriously controversial Iraqi exile, best known for writing Republic of Fear under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil, gave everyone another reason to hate what he's doing. On Wednesday, journalist John Gravois wrote a piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education about how Makiya's Memory Foundation recently handed off "seven million pages of records and other artifacts," all produced during Saddam's rule, to a conservative think tank based in California called the Hoover Institution.

"I still can't understand how and why Mr. Kanan Makiya took all those documents and in what position," wrote Donny George Youkhanna, the former director of the Iraq Museum, on IraqCrisis. "All those documents are Iraqi property and they should go back immediately to the Iraqi institution that is responsible for the National Documents, that is the National Library and Archives."

The Chronicle reports that Makiya received permission from the U.S. government in 2005 to ship the documents to the United States, so government contractors could scan all of the documents quickly. Makiya said that he has received permission from numerous Iraqi government officials to keep control of the archives. But this latest deal caused quite an uproar. For one, it raised the hackles of Dr. Sa'ad Eskander, the director general of the Iraq National Library and Archive, who maintains that Baath Party documents are public property that belong in the country's national archives.

In an interview with the Chronicle, Eskander cited Iraqi laws from 1963 and 1983 and chapters of the Hague and the Geneva Conventions to argue that the documents are Iraq's property and the Memory Foundation's possession of them is illegal. For instance, the deal violates the The Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which demands that occupying powers respect and protect cultural property during national and international conflicts.

Makiya told the Chronicle that he would love to return the documents to Iraq. But he told the Chronicle, "Baghdad is just not ready for it." He worries about whether Iraq's members of parliament will use the records to smear the reputations of their opponents and critics. "It's not [Eskander's] good intentions that I'm worried about," he said. "It's his bosses'."

In 2005, Eskander wrote in a letter to Jeff Spurr, an Islamic and Middle East Specialist at Harvard, that that the Memory Foundation and the Hoover Institution have no right whatsoever to possess the archives. "These documents are highly sensitive from political and human rights perspective, as they contain the names of tens of thousands of people," he wrote. "They should not be held by any private group, which can use it for its own interests. If you read Iraqi newspapers, then you will understand how the stolen documents are misused for political and personal reasons. Yes, the IMF people are liberals, but they need to respect liberal rules and regulations."

On IraqCrisis two days ago, Spurr wrote that this situation generally sends a dire message: "It is a sure sign of that government's lack of commitment to its own laws, and susceptibility to outside pressure. That little is made--in Iraq or in the US--of the unseemly deal by which these documents were surreptitiously spirited out of Baghdad by the US military, similarly reflects on this lack of governmental integrity. How is the INLA to pursue its legal right to the tens of millions of documents seized by the US Army in 2003, if such behavior is supported in late 2005 and further countenanced in 2008?"

As for Dr. Eskander who won the 2007 Academic Freedom Award from the Middle East Studies Association for helping transform the decimated national library into a space with a staff of over 400 stocked with computers and a reading room for scholars and students. Spurr writes: "Dr. Eskander's every declaration, and his remarkable work to rebuild and rejuvenate the INLA make his institution the very--indeed the only--unequivocal expression of the values voiced and purportedly adhered to by Kanan Makiya himself to be found in Iraq at present. That it would be Makiya himself who most publicly undermines the INLA's position is shameful at best."

In the letter, Eskander wrote that he offered to work with members of the Memory Foundation in archiving the documents, but this went unanswered. "I asked our Deputy Minister, Maysoon Al-Damluji, to talk to the head of the IMF in Baghdad, Mr. Mustafa Al-Kadhimiy. He refused to talk to us or even to acknowledge the existence of any Iraqi legislation governing archival issues. By the way Al-Damluji is a friend of Kanan Makiya," he wrote. "I tried in vain to tell the IMF people that they were violating Iraqi laws, and that they should respect the rule of laws if they are true democrats."

Jeff Spurr had some harsh words to say about Gravois' work, writing that the article is inaccurate and patronizes Eskander. Gravois told Spurr that he is working on a longer piece about the issue. I eagerly await its publication...

Photo: Outside the Iraq National Library and Archive. Courtesy the Mind Matters blog.

Iraq Watch: Enabling Genocide

Even after the British drew up Iraq's borders after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Sunnis, Shias, Jews, Turks, Kurds and others drank chai tea, talked politics and hit up the bustling book markets of Baghdad, one of the most diverse cities in the Middle East. But over the past few years, Baghdad has been systematically cleansed of its diversity.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in Ghaziliya, a neighborhood that was once a flashpoint for Sunni-on-Shia violence. Now America has staved off the sectarian violence, in part by dividing up the neighborhood with twenty miles of concrete blast barriers.

"Everyone in our neighborhood is Sunni, even the birds flying above us are Sunni," resident Mohammed Azzawi told the LA Times in November. "Now that it is pure Sunni, it is better for us."

The U.S. is currently taking a "bottom-up" approach to stoking reconciliation. Part of that involves recruiting "Local Concerned Citizens," security forces aligned with Americans that will increase the peace in local neighborhoods. Already, roughly 60,000 Iraqis have joined the force.

There are plenty of people to kill in Iraq: a kaleidoscope of terrorists, death squads, mafia-style criminal networks and Islamic militias. But intelligence is the key to counterinsurgency, and that is something many Americans—from those on the front lines, to commanders at the Pentagon, to administrators in the White House—don't have. And it is becoming increasingly apparent that hunting, imprisoning and killing more bad guys will not resolve deep-seated tensions that have haunted Iraqis for 35 years under Saddam Hussein.

So the United States' alliance with Sunni sheiks, including those in Ghaziliya, looks like it will only enable a civil war.

"Now the Americans are with the Sunnis and against the Shiites," Azzawi said.

What should the occupier do? Pulling out entirely, by all accounts, would lead to genocidal civil war. Training new security forces without being entirely scrupulous would enable genocidal civil war. Leaving only a handful of advisors or Special Forces there, to train security forces or to hunt Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for the next decade, would not only starve the military of resources to stave off genocidal civil war, but prolong our violent and unwelcome occupation of Iraq.

One thing is certain: sooner or later, we will leave Iraq to the Iraqis. In October, U.S. military leaders considered declaring victory on Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, since many of those militants have been forced from Baghdad. Starting in late November, the United States began withdrawing a first batch of 5,000 troops from Diyala Province, which will bring the American troop count down to 157,000. The Iraq Study Group, which produced a dire assessment of the occupation's progress in December 2006, recommended that we withdraw our troops by March 2008.

Whatever we do, it appears that genocide is Iraq's destiny. So why not leave now, and resign ourselves to the fact that our nation is, in large part, responsible for Iraq's fate?

At the moment, that is a question I do not care to answer. Even philosophically, I do not want to be complicit in my own country's hideous crimes. But I cannot help but feel that, being an American, I already am a war criminal.

A version of this article ran in this week's issue of the New School Free Press.

Former C.I.A. Agents Discuss Politics, Disrepute and Torture at the New School

Two former CIA agents joined New School President Bob Kerrey in a panel discussion at 55 West 13th Street earlier today, saying that the Bush Administration disregarded tried-and-true spying techniques to justify the invasion of Iraq, that Congressional oversight is good for the CIA, and that "enhanced interrogation" techniques are ineffective and legally questionable when adopted by the CIA.

The event could not have come at a more appropriate time. Today, the front pages of U.S. newspapers bore articles about a National Intelligence Estimate released the day before, which said Iran had halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003. The report, an assessment compiled by America's 16 intelligence agencies, stood in marked contrast to George W. Bush's comments in October that Iran is currently working to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs and propelling the United States towards "World War III."

Tyler Drumheller, the former director of covert operations for the CIA's division in Europe, who retired from the CIA in 2005, said that the Bush Administration has shirked the intelligence community's normal methods of "agent work, reporting and data collection."

"Intelligence is a story, a never-ending story," Drumheller said. Agents, analysts and policy experts constantly need to reassess their conclusions, he said, because their subjects of inquiry--for instance, states like Iran--are naturally given to making changes in their interests and policies.

But the Bush administration, Drumheller said, pursues "the magic bullet."

"This is the truth, the way it's gotta be," he said, elaborating.

In the run-up to the Iraq War, Drumheller worked with other agents to investigate whether Iraq was hoarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. He later wrote On the Brink, an insider's account of how the Bush Administration relied on an unreliable Iraqi defector nicknamed "Curveball" to justify the war in Iraq, which hit bookstores in 2006.

He said that another Iraqi source kept "telling us that there were no weapons of mass destruction."

"If they could do it," the source told them, "they would do it."

He said that this source did not find a way into a National Intelligence Estimate released in 2002, which concluded that Iraq was manufacturing chemical and biological weapons and planned to revive its nuclear weapons program. After the United States invaded Iraq, it turned out that the NIE's conclusions were erroneously flawed.

There is a simple message this new intelligence report intends to send, Kerrey said: "We can be nonpartisan. You can trust us again."

A few moments after Drumheller started speaking, Lang sophomore Alex Cline and two students wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods entered the room.

"We're the people you torture," Cline announced. The mock prisoners posted themselves to the left of the panel speakers, facing the audience, and stood in silence for the rest of the hour-and-fifteen minute long discussion.

Drumheller continued speaking, seemingly unfazed. Eventually the subject turned to the CIA's reputation in America. Margaret Henoch, who worked as an agent in Washington D.C. and across the world for twenty years, and who retired in early 2007, said that ever since the days of George Washington, Americans have felt a sense of "ambivalence, dislike, distrust" for their spy agencies.

"Americans like to know what their government is doing," Drumheller added, gesturing towards the two mock detainees in the room—who held signs saying things like, "Abolish the CIA," "We All Live in a Racist Police State," and "Close Guantanamo."

Kerrey said that, in some ways, the United States has never had a reliable intelligence agency—in part, because Congressional oversight limits the work of intelligence agencies here. Regardless, the two former agents and Kerrey agreed that they would not like to have it any other way.

Congressional oversight can make being a spy a "frightening, terrifying experience," Drumheller said, "but it makes you sharper."

During the question and answer session, asked if he thought the term "enhanced interrogation" justified the use of torture in interrogations, Drumheller said that he did not believe such techniques—which include water-boarding, stripping prisoners, threatening detainees with dogs, and putting them in rooms that are brightly lit or extremely cold for long periods of time—constitute acts of torture.

Using torture during civil and international conflicts violates the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which bans, "Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture," as well as, "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."

Drumheller said "enhanced interrogation" techniques are ineffective, since they usually yield unreliable information. He added that holding prisoners is not the "province of the CIA"—and Henoch nodded emphatically in agreement—since the FBI and the military are trained to interrogate prisoners and maintain prisons.

"The minute you get an intelligence service into prisoner, holding, interrogation, you're in a very murky, dangerous world," he said.

"Who should be held responsible? I don't know," he continued. "I could give you a list of people. But that would just be my personal prejudice."

The audience laughed.

Photo: New School President Bob Kerrey with former CIA agents Margaret Henoch and Tyler Drumheller. By them stand two mock detainees and Lang sophomore Alex Cline. By Sam Lewis.

Excavations-Cum-Military Installations: Iraq's Occupied Historical Sites

The Iraqi Security Forces, aided by the U.S. military, are starting a construction project beside yet another historic site in Iraq.

This week, after seeing a disheartening collection of photos posted by journalist Jeff Emanuel in late September, archaeologists have been scrambling to figure out what has become of an excavation site for an Abbasid city once populated by Turkish princes in Samarra, where the Iraqi Security Forces began constructing new police barracks in September.

"It is a remarkable documentation, action photos of the work, US officers calmly observing, bulldozers in action flattening an Abbasid palace, details of the barracks being put up," wrote Dr. Alastair Northedge, Professor of Islamic art and archeology at the Sorbonne in Paris and an expert on Samarra's Islamic history, on the IraqCrisis email list. "I don't believe that any other destructive action with regard to antiquities in Iraq during the war has ever been documented in such detail."

Northedge told The Art Newspaper that the new barracks are beside the palace of Sur Isa, which experts believe was constructed by Caliph Al-Mutawakkil sometime between 852 and 853 AD. Northedge also said the new, drab, tan barracks were built over Abbasid houses once home to Turkish princes. Aziz Hamid excavated the houses in the 1960s. "They revealed very interesting stucco relief that lined the walls," wrote Lamia Gailani, a staff member of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, on IraqCrisis.

Northedge lived in a caravan park beside the houses in 1983, doing excavation work for the Iraq State Board of Antiquities. "The event is particularly poignant for me," he wrote.

This June, UNESCO declared Samarra's 9th-century site, littered with ruins of racing tracks, hunting grounds, mosques and palaces of the Abbasid empire, and the 52-meter tall spiral minaret of the Great Mosque of Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, a World Heritage site. Now it is on the list of endangered World Heritage sites. But Christina Dahlman, the Program Specialist for the UNESCO Office for Iraq, told the AN that no staff have visited the area yet because of security concerns. She added that UNESCO wasn't consulted on the construction for the police barracks.

"To our knowledge the [Iraq] State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, which manages the site and is UNESCO's main partner in Iraq, was not consulted either," she added.

Dr. John Curtis, director of the Department of Ancient Near East at the British Museum, told me over the phone this summer that the State and Defense Departments have worked with the State Board of Antiquities since the looting of the Iraq Museum in April 2003, mostly to retrieve stolen artifacts and protect archaeological sites. During the days of the Coalition Provisional Authority, John Russell worked through the State Department as Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Culture. In 2004, he helped donate 20 pickup trucks to guards of Iraq's archaeological sites. These days, at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, archaeologist Ismail Hijaraut works as a liaison to the Ministry of Culture.

But Dr. Curtis, who has done extensive work on Middle Eastern history and has worked on preserving Iraq's cultural heritage with the U.S. government and various organizations since 2003, said there is no coordinated program to preserve Iraq's many ancient and Islamic landmarks.

Over the past several years, organizations like the British Museum, the Oriental Institute in Chicago, the British School of Archeology in Iraq, UNESCO, Safe Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE), and Interpol have filled the void with extensive databases documenting looted artifacts, research and consulting on Iraq's heritage and ancient sites, investigations to retrieve artifacts, and more. But since the invasion of 2003, the lack of U.S. support and coordination and Iraq's terrible security concerns have dogged their work.

“We have a very fragmented sort of situation," Curtis said. "What we have to rely on is very, very occasional visits, what we get told by the Iraqi side, or what we can see by satellite photographs."

This summer, Dr. Curtis visited another ancient site-cum-military installation, the Tallil Air Force Base, which surrounds the ancient city of Ur. The air base has a visitors' center built on top of an ancient suburb of the city, called Diqdiqa. On his visit, Curtis did not see much damage to the area, which had never been excavated. But he said the military had dug into the grounds - filled with ancient fragments of pottery and brick - in order to build a foundation and plumbing. Apparently, nobody consulted experts on the construction. “They would certainly have told him, 'Don’t build this,'" Curtis said. "Even the Iraqi guard could’ve told him that.”

His second trip to Iraq since the invasion, this one was short and limited. The day before Dr. Curtis' plane dove from the air safely onto the tarmac, insurgents had blasted 11 mortars onto the base. His security detail refused to take him to the entrance of the base, where the director of the State Board of Antiquities, Abbas al-Hussaini, had been arguing with military personnel for an hour. Hussaini refused to submit to a search, so the military refused his convoy entrance to the base. Without meeting Curtis, Hussaini and his colleagues headed back to Baghdad.

In June, the military sent 40,000 decks of cards to service members in Iraq. They bore images of Iraq's many cultural sites, including Babylon and Ur. "The suits have different themes: diamonds for artefacts, spades for digs, hearts for 'winning hearts and minds' and clubs for heritage preservation," reads a description of the cards by the Assyrian International News Agency. "The seven of clubs carries a picture of the Ctesiphon Arch in Iraq and a caption which asks: 'This site has survived 17 centuries. Will it and others survive you?'"

The cards seem geared as a gesture to raise awareness among troops about Iraqi heritage, in light of the U.S. military's past mistakes - which include the construction of a helicopter pad on the ancient ruins of Babylon and, in 2005, the periodic use of the spiral minaret at the Great Mosque of Caliph Al-Mutawakkil in Samarra as a firing position.

“That’s a gesture, I suppose, to raise the level of awareness of the troops," Curtis said. "But you’d have to ask the troops themselves” about what they think and what they’re doing to preserve Iraqi cultural heritage, he added.

One thing is certain about the state of Iraq's archaeological sites: the Coalition Forces and the Iraq Security Forces will continue to occupy many of them, unimpeded by international law. Northedge, the Paris-based Professor of Islamic art, noted on IraqCrisis that Jeff Emanuel's photos indicate that the U.S. military's Patrol Base Olson sits on the ruins of the Abbasid city in Samarra. Northedge wrote that the military is in the clear: "That point is outside the UNESCO fully protected area."

Photo: Hard at work on the Iraqi police barracks while, in the background, stands the 52-meter tall spiral minaret of the Great Mosque of Caliph Al-Mutawakkil. By Jeff Emanuel.

Special note: a Q & A with Alastair Northedge is forthcoming.

Pancakes After Mosul

In October 2005, a plane filled with soldiers touched down at McChord Air Force Base in Washington State. Sergeant Carl Westlind stepped onto the tarmac, then hopped onto a bus with his platoon, which headed to Fort Lewis nearby. The soldiers marched over to a gym on the base, where their families were waiting.

“Oh hell yeah,” Westlind recalled thinking, in a phone interview earlier tonight. “Oh hell yeah.”

They arrived at the gym, and a huge shutter door opened. It was a Hollywood moment, he said. Immediately he saw his mom, a housewife who loves gardening, in the crowd of eager parents. His commander gave a brief, congratulatory speech, then dismissed the soldiers for the weekend.

Westlind, 25, a member of the Charlie Company Styker Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, had spent the past year in Mosul, a city in Iraq then at the focal point of a U.S. counterinsurgency effort. He described his mission as “police work,” pursuing “bombmakers and guys that chopped off heads.” Now, he was back in the United States.

Westlind raced to his mom and gave her a huge hug.

“I’m home,” he told her.

Westlind spent some time in his hometown of Longview, Washington, an industrial and logging town of about 50,000, forty or so miles north of Portland, Oregon. He got a good night’s sleep. He ate at his favorite restaurant, The Pancake House. He had a lot of money saved up, so he considered buying two four-wheel drive ATVs. He decided to save his money.

He also reunited with as many people as he could—his dad, a lineman who lives in Alaska, his girlfriend at the time (the relationship never worked out), old high school friends. Many of them, he said, asked “spectator questions.”

“‘Blow anybody up?’ No,” he said. “‘Did you kill anybody?’ Nope.”

In Mosul, Westlind stayed with his reconnaissance platoon in an air-conditioned metal container at a Forward Operating Base on the edge of the city, next door to a mortar platoon. It was “one big old family,” he said.

On one of their last patrols, Westlind's team was was caught in a vicious firefight and a soldier almost died. But in general, Westlind said his team faced little combat. The resistance came randomly, he said—once in a while, a few “jackasses” would drive by in a car and fire a few shots at the soldiers.

“I hear the word 'war,' I think of WWII. D Day," he said. “Honestly, it didn’t really seem like war."

In a year, he only fired his weapon once. Late one night, he was heading down a road in a convoy back to base. An Improvised Explosive Device erupted, hitting the truck ahead of his. Everyone dismounted from their vehicles and scanned the area. After making out what he thought were two insurgents in the distance, a soldier started firing a 50-caliber machine gun. Westlind followed suit, pumping grenades from his Mark-19 in the same direction.

He got a message on the radio: “Westlind, you’re right on top of him!” He continued firing a barrage of grenades. But after the troops scanned the target area, they found nothing.

Westlind is still not sure if he killed anyone, but since his team never recovered any bodies after the incident, he tells people that he did not.

“If I did,” he said, “they were obliterated.”

Not much had changed in Westlind’s hometown, he said. One friend looked a tad older. There was a new supermarket.

Westlind said he had not changed much, either—he experienced no anxiety attacks, nightmares, or other Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-related complications.

But he still has memories of his time in Mosul.

Around Christmas time in 2004, a suicide bomber found his way into one platoon’s chow hall. He blew himself up, killing 19 soldiers. Every so often, the image of one victim returns to Westlind’s mind: “A fairly heavy-set soldier staring straight into the sky, starting to turn a little bit blue.”

Westlind loved the men of his own platoon. With them he had spent three years training in California, Louisiana and eastern Washington, and then serving in Iraq.

“I consider every one of them my brother,” he said. “Some of them I would consider my dad.”

“We all came back home alive,” he added.

He regrets not collecting all of their phone numbers after returning from Iraq.

Not long after Westlind redeployed, he was posted as a recruiter at a station in Lynwood, Washington. Most people who entered the office to join the Army were either felons, he said, or “overblown medical cases.” A man once came in who had wires in his hands, pins in his knees and a plate in his head. These types were all summarily rejected.

Westlind also recruited at Lynwood, Meadowdale and Scriber Lake High Schools. He had trouble finding new recruits.

“‘Oh, heck no. I hate Bush. I hate the war.’ Blah blah blah,” he said. “Those are two things I just can’t help.”

Last May, he transferred out of the recruiting job and moved to Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas. By the end of his recruiting tenure, he said, “I put in zero people.”

In a few months, Westlind will leave the United States again. He is now training for a deployment to Afghanistan. He is not sure when he leaves, or where he will go once he gets there. He is happy that he will go there instead of Iraq, he added, since Afghanistan is statistically facing less violence than Iraq.

Westlind will get married before he deploys. He met his 32-year-old fiancée when she worked on ships for the Navy and built tug-boats—“stuff that big boys do,” he said. He hopes that she will be prepared for their separation once he deploys. He is optimistic, since she knows the ways of military family life.

“Luckily for me,” he said, “she’s an Army brat.”

Photo: Sgt. Carl Westlind with the Strykers in Mosul, Iraq