Asia Times: "The bright, shining lie"

[Frederik]

"The American media often discuss the political makeup of the insurgency, but no one until now has suggested that some of the very forces being trained by the United States might be longing for the return of Saddam. To the extent that this is the case - or that these forces are otherwise opposed to the occupation - the United States, far from improving "security", is now training the future resistance to itself.

Indeed, the soldiers of Charlie Company told Shadid and Fainaru that 17 of them had quit in recent days. They added that every one of them planned to do the same as soon as possible. Their reasons were simple. They were bitter at the United States. "Look at the homes of the Iraqis," one soldier remarked. "The people have been destroyed." When asked by whom, he answered, "Them" - and pointed to the Americans leading the patrol.

The Iraqis had enlisted in the new army only for the salary - US$340 per month, an enviable sum in today's ruined Iraq. But the money had come at the price of self-respect. The new recruits had been bought off and hated themselves for it. One said that after they had all quit, "We'll live by God, but we'll have our respect."

One might wonder whether the reporters had deliberately or unknowingly picked an exceptionally rebellious unit. But in fact, Charlie Company was selected by the US Army itself, presumably eager to put its best foot forward."

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GF17Ak01.html

[Kindigger]

1. Excellent article!

...Sergeant Rick McGovern, who leads the unit, dressed them down. "You are all cowards," he informed them. He went on, "My soldiers are over here, away from our families for a year. We are willing to die for you to have freedom. You should be willing to die for your own freedom." The tongue-lashing assumed that the Iraqis and the American shared a cause that, as the story shows, was actually 100% missing.

...Iraqi men who hate the American occupation are not cowards if they decline to shoot other men who are fighting the occupation. On the contrary, the more courage they had, the less they would engage in such a fight....

And so the Americans and the Iraqis of Charlie Company, like the United States and Iraq in general today, are led, by choice on the one side and by bribery and compulsion on the other, to play roles in a script that has little or nothing to do with the situation they are actually in. In this situation, it is not necessary to form a whole sentence to tell a lie. Use of single words or phrases - "Iraqi sovereignty", "freedom", "election", "security", "democracy", "anti-Iraqi forces", even "courage" and "cowardice" - involve the speaker in deception, for they are the constitutive elements of a framework of thought and belief that is itself a fabrication.

Gee W, I think the guy that wrote this "got the memo".

[PATRICK]

2. Weaning out the best

of character and you are left with what? The insanity of the berating officer is such blind absurdity as to guarantee a disastrous result flying in the face of counter productive efforts.

And they have training and new first hand hatred of the idiot conquerors. Idiocy as well as insulting arrogance. The hallmark of "democratic" America pours from the blackened souls and dark minds at the top like a gold lined sewer. Following the lead of other professional armies formed in the good old days of non existent democracy, it only takes a change at the top to turn the whole engine over a cliff guided by the indolent hand of crazed aristos.

The Roman Army suffered its worst defeats this way. So too all the other "greats".

We have blind, maliicious guides.

[rodeodance]

3. and they sing-----a ballad to Saddam Hussein,

Sometimes the truth of a large, confusing historical enterprise can be glimpsed in a single news report. Such is the case in regard to the Iraq war, it seems, with the recent story in the Washington Post by Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru called "Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable". Shadid and Fainaru did something that is rarely done: they spent several days with a unit of Iraq's new, American-trained forces. (The typical treatment of the topic consists of a few interviews with American officers in the Green Zone in Baghdad, leading to some estimation of how long it will take to complete the job.) The Post story starts with the lyrics of a song the soldiers of the unit, called Charlie Company, were singing out of earshot of their American overseers. It was a ballad to Saddam Hussein, and it ran:

We have lived in humiliation since you left
We had hoped to spend our life with you

[Lisa]

4. "Varus -- give me back my legions!"

We'll be coming up on the 2000th anniversary of that defeat (3 legions virtually wiped out, by a rebellion led by Roman-trained auxiliaries). Looks like Mr. Yale History Major didn't come to class when they were covering that particular event.

[fedsron2us]

5. I hope your analogy is wrong

The battle in the Teutoburg forest in 9 AD which led to the annihilation of the 3 legions under the Roman commander Varus occurred during the Principate of Augustus. The Roman Empire in western Europe continued to exist for another four hundred years. If history was to repeat itself then you would be looking at neocons controlling the Whitehouse until at least 2400 AD. I find that a truly scary thought.

[Lisa]

6. I hope the Imperial Rome analogy is wrong, too ...

The thought of this particular regime dragging its immense bulk around, bludgeoning everything in its path for the next half-millennium, is horrifying. The world is so much smaller than during the Roman era -- there just isn't any room for alternative ways of thinking. They'd either be absorbed, or crushed. And I don't like to consider how far, or hard, a subsequent collapse could be.

Even creepier is the thought of future generations thinking that Imperial America was a truly fabulous idea, with Bush as a godlike heroic figure, and trying to emulate him. I (and probably a lot of others) admired Julius Caesar and Augustus -- that's what they taught us in school -- until I did more reading as an adult, and saw the negative sides of the empire.

Did you know, there are plans for a re-enactment of the battle in 2009
http://www.chasuari.de/

and even a possible movie?
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Salon/2385/varus.html

I wonder what kind of historial spin will be put on it.

[kineneb]

7. Being of German ancestry,

I always cheer for the "barbarians." The guys that took out the legions were likely ancestors. Also, it was possibly the first incident of real guerrilla warfare against an organized army. Sure, march your legions through the dark, soggy forest and get picked off right and left. The History channel had a good segment on this in their "Barbarians" series.

And it was the same barbarians, as slaves, that eventually opened the gates to bring down the totally corrupt Imperial Rome several hundred years later.

This being the modern era, the time for such things is much more compressed. How long was Rome around vs. our 200+ years?

[oblivious]

8. What a hopeless situation for the invaders.