Have things really gotten that bad? → U.S. government is cruel, despotic, a threat to people → threat to world peace → insisting on the global rule of the unilateral iron fist

Now things get more informal. I’m going to drop by here from time to time and make some notes about how things are going for me in this experiment.

In ’s news we have the pathetic scene of the U.S. administration bragging about its impressive alliance. Rumsfeld bragged that “the coalition in this activity is larger than the coalition that existed during the Gulf War in .”

Except that it isn’t. Not even close.

In at least 33 countries sent forces to the campaign against Iraq and 16 of those provided combat ground forces, including a large number of Arab countries.

In the only fighting forces are from the United States, Britain and Australia. Ten other countries are known to have offered small numbers of noncombat forces, mostly either medical teams and specialists in decontamination, making a comparable alliance of about 13 countries.

U.S. officials have named 33 countries which support the U.S. invasion of Iraq but this includes countries which are providing overflight and basing rights and which are giving only diplomatic or political support for the invasion.…

They say some 15 other countries are cooperating with the U.S. war effort behind the scene, mostly by giving access to bases and airspace, but they do not want to be named.

In the United States and its allies did not count countries which provided overflight rights or political support because the campaign had the overwhelming support of the U.N. Security Council, which had voted 12-2 for the use of force.…

This time the United States failed to obtain U.N. Security Council authorization for the use of force. It gave up its efforts when it became clear that it could not win.

One of the biggest differences is that none of the declared members of the alliance are Arab countries, although some may be on the list of governments who prefer to act in secret, and several, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, are allowing their facilities to be used.

How proud can you be of an alliance where a third of its members are ashamed to admit it?

The Guardian’s Emma Brockes called up the embassies of such U.S. allies as Colombia, Georgia, and Nicaragua, to ask how they were helping (What can Eritrea possibly do to help the US in Iraq?):

Eritrea is one of the poorest, most war-torn countries in the world. I call the embassy to ask how it intends to show its support of the US and coalition of the willing, of which it is a member. There is a long, stunned pause before the spokeswoman says: “Can you call back tomorrow morning?”

If you want to reduce the threat of domestic and foreign terrorism, gain international support and make your foreign occupation brief, relatively bloodless, and encouraging of democratic values — why not go to the experts: Israel? You can’t argue with their track record!

The idea U.S. forces in Iraq may be taking lessons in occupation and counterinsurgency from the Israeli Defense Force may have only just begun to make the news in America, but it has been obvious to Iraqis for some time. For residents of the Sunni Triangle, who have spent years watching TV images of the residents of the West Bank and Gaza living under siege, surrounded by checkpoints and suffering periodic air strikes and military sweeps, the Palestinian experience offers a ready template for understanding the turn taken by their own lives over . Whole villages have been surrounded by razor wire, their residents forced to pass through checkpoints; U.S. aircraft and artillery have blasted buildings suspected of being used by insurgents; there have even been instances of family members of suspected insurgents being taken into custody when their wanted relatives can’t be found. As one Iraqi waiting on line at a checkpoint last week told the New York Times, “I see no difference between us and the Palestinians.” That’s a worrying development for U.S. authorities, since in the eyes of much of the Arab world, the humiliation of occupation has served to justify terrorism against the Israelis.

It’s not just the Iraqis of the Sunni Triangle that are seeing some connection between their experience and that of the Palestinians. A series of recent media reports suggests that U.S. forces have specifically sought advice, training and expertise from the Israeli Defense Force on how to deal with the Iraqi insurgency, although such contacts have remained discreet. “PR catastrophe” would be an understatement for the reaction in the Arab world, and in Iraq itself, if an army that likes to think of itself as Iraq’s liberators turns out to be seeking coaching from Israel. The New York Times reported that U.S. officers had gone to Israel to study its experiences of urban warfare and counterinsurgency in the West Bank and Gaza before invading Iraq. The British Guardian quotes unnamed U.S. officials confirming that Israeli officers are helping to train U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg for counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, and also claims that Israeli officers have been in Iraq discreetly serving as consultants to U.S. operations there. The New Yorker quotes unnamed U.S. and Israeli officials to the same effect, stressing that the sensitivity of such contacts precludes their public acknowledgment.

The next best thing in public relations would be to send troops on one of their many overseas missions dressed as Imperial Stormtroopers.

Courtesy of TomDispatch:

“You have to understand the Arab mind,” Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. “The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face.”

Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns New York Times

“Only the fear of force gets results. It’s the Asian mind. It’s completely different than the Western mind. Look — they’re a thousand years behind us in this place, and we’re trying to get them up to our level.”

Captain Ted L. Shipman, U.S. intelligence officer, quoted in Jonathan Schell’s The Real War: The Classic Reporting on the Vietnam War

The most pitiful of the damned are those who are condemned both to remember the past and to repeat it. With that in mind, let’s review Lessons from the Past: The American Record on Nation Building.

The record of past U.S. experience in democratic nation building is daunting. The low rate of success is a sobering reminder that these are among the most difficult foreign policy ventures for the United States. Of the sixteen such efforts during , democracy was sustained in only four cases ten years after the departure of U.S. forces. Two of these followed the total defeat and surrender of Japan and Germany after World War Ⅱ, and two were tiny Grenada and Panama. Unilateral nation building by the United States has had an even rougher time — perhaps because unilateralism has led to surrogate regimes and direct U.S. administration during the postconflict period. Not one American-supported surrogate regime has made the transition to democracy, and only one case of direct American administration has done so.

The march of freedom continues in Iraq:

The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than the democracy they have been promised.

Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.

Marine commanders working in unheated, war-damaged downtown buildings are hammering out the details of their paradoxical task: Bring back the 300,000 residents in time for elections without letting in insurgents, even though many Fallujans were among the fighters who ruled the city until the US assault drove them out in , and many others cooperated with fighters out of conviction or fear.

One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.

“You have to say, ‘Here are the rules,’ and you are firm and fair. That radiates stability,” said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon, intelligence officer for the First Regimental Combat Team, the Marine regiment that took the western half of Fallujah during the US assault and expects to be based downtown for some time.

Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, “ ‘What are your needs? What are your emotional needs?’ All this Oprah [stuff],” he said. “They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, ‘I’m with you.’ We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe.”

More on our tribal benevolence can be found at TomDispatch.com, which gives a brief history of aerial bombardment on the way to telling about “the great missing story of the postwar war.”

While I’ve been studying my Aristotle, links have been piling up in my bookmarks. Here are some of them: