Dinner with George and Laura

… That would be George Packer, the author of the best book to date on US follies (and worse) in Iraq: The Assassins’ Gate, and Laura Secor, a writer and editor who had an intriguing piece in The New Yorker last fall about the lives of some of the reformist younger generation in Teheran. But I couldn’t resist putting “George and Laura” like that into the heading for y’all.
Bill the spouse and I had a great conversation with G&L at the dinner there last night. George is recently back from his latest reporting trip to Iraq. But I can’t write a word about what he told us because his own account of it won’t be in The New Yorker till “late March.”
What I can write about, I think, was Laura’s observation– based on the reporting she did in Serbia during the campaign for the election that toppled Milosevic, as well as her more recent two trips to Iran– about the distinct difference in the US-funded and -supported activities that helped the Serbian student movement ‘Otpor’ to become well organized, and the more recently announced $75 million that the Bushies will be giving to support opposition movements in Iran…. Her main observation was that the US never publicly announced the aid it was giving to Otpor-– “I was there, talking with them a lot, and I never got an inkling about US government funding”… Whereas of course, the aid to the Iranian “opposition” (identity of recipients not yet clear) has been trumpeted upfront.
Otpor went on to win its anti-Milosevic campaign.
And as for this latest Bushite initiative???

14 thoughts on “Dinner with George and Laura”

  1. I think Bush was recently criticized in congress for his Middle East policy. Is this campaign a response to this criticism?
    There was an interesting article in the Guardian several years ago about U.S. orchestration of regime change by training/supporting opposition groups.

  2. Bush is too stupid to understand how to do things. You can’t have sanctions in place and anti-Iran rhetoric every five seconds then say this 75 million thing. It looks like he’s trying to foment a coup. God what an idiot

  3. I look forward to the March issue of the New Yorker, and hope George covers a bit the cartoon violence that continues now into Pakistan, broadly claimed about 60 lives, but somehow is not covered anymore in JWN. Particularly despicable are the bounties being offered in India and Pakistan for killing the Danish cartoonist.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4736854.stm
    I think an analysis of how the cartoon reaction affects the chances of Turkey joining the EU is of general interest.

  4. davis- how about how it affects Irans chances to get nuclear power? I don’t think it’s helped them. Most countries these days have some sort of terrorist threat and will bear that in mind when voting. there was a cartoon in the boston globe that had ahmadnajad saying “we want it for peacful purposes…unless someone makes a cartoon we don’t like”

  5. Much of the violence from the Danish cartoon episode is cynically generated by authoritarian regimes (such as Syria) trying to deflect public opinion away from domestic shortcomings or, in the case of Pakistan, by those who are trying to topple Musharraf. It is quite a leap for them to redirect anger away from Denmark and Europe over the cartoons to the U.S. but it serves their purpose, particularly in view of Bush’s forthcoming visit.

  6. Blood for oil
    I am a disabled military veteran who served My Country in the US Navy, at war on four separate occasions. I completed two full tours in Viet Nam for a total of 22 months of combat. I applied and was accepted for a voluntary recall to active duty for Operation Desert Storm. I later returned to the Persian Gulf to participate in Operation Desert Shield. Also, after the Viet Nam War, I was with the first ships My Country ever sent into a combat zone in the Persian Gulf (Indian Ocean) in 1973 to provide support for our effort in the Yom Kipper War. In addition, for three years I served in the Army National Guard, where I worked in support of the U S Border Patrol in its effort to defend our borders against the smuggling of illegal personnel and contraband (1994-96).

    I say all this to give evidence that there is hardly anyone in this country who is more patriotic, or has more love for it and is willing to give more for it, and certainly no one who has served it more, except maybe Secretary Powell himself. Therefore, I think my two-cents are worth hearing.

    I never thought that I could ever be as ashamed of and look as lowly upon My Country as I now do. You could never have made me believe that the leaders of My Country would be so willing, so eager to throw away the blood of its young men and women so that the extremely wealthy oilmen of My Country (ie, Bush I, Bush II, Cheney, and all the other oilmen that were brought into the present presidential administration at its conception) could become even wealthier.

    You should recall that during his presidential campaign, Bush II had no foreign policy, nor any concept of one. He couldn’t even pronounce the names of some of the world leaders whose antics were in the media on a daily basis. So, all these ideas and perceptions that he presently has came from those who have impressed their own ideas upon him (ie those within his circle, both private and public). These people within this circle must be very close to President in order to have as strong an influence upon him in order for him to risk his political career, his party’s standing, and of course, the blood of America’s youth.

    For the most part, these are people who had developed a close relationship with Bush I, not Bush II. As for his circle of influence, well, he was a leader in the oil industry prior to entering politics. Being in that business he would have cultivated good working relationships with the industry’s other leaders. These would be the extremely wealthy oilmen whose best interest is served by My Country gaining control of its own oil-producing and exporting country; ie Iraq. For this purpose, the youth of My Country will have to give up their lives.

    This is the only benefit for My Country; to gain control over Iraq and take over it’s oil industry by placing our own handpicked administrators at the top of its oil producing operations. And who would control those handpicked administrators? It would be the same people who would benefit the most – the oilmen of the Bush circle.

    No one ever mentions one word as to how victory over Iraq would benefit the people of My Country. The reasoning the Bush II administration give for war against Iraq is that they have become a threat to us because they ‘probably have’ weapons of mass destruction. Remember, we don’t know for sure, we only assume. But, even given that assumption, I say, ‘So what?’

    China has weapons of mass destruction. Russia has weapons of mass destruction. North Korea has weapons of mass destruction. India has weapons of mass destruction. Pakistan has weapons of mass destruction. Guess what, the United States of America, (My Country), has weapons of mass destruction. In all of this, I am not referring to chemical weapons, but rather to nuclear.

    We don’t know for sure if Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. If they do, we know for sure that they are of chemical origin only, for they have no nuclear capabilities as yet. And not in twelve years, since the Persian War, have they threatened anyone with the use of these chemical weapons. In fact, for the past twelve years we have maintained two no-fly zones over their country, which have successfully ensured Iraq’s inability to use or threaten any country with these or any other weapons. Since the Gulf War and because of the efficiency of maintaining these no-fly zones, Iraq has not been a threat to anyone. They have not threatened any of their neighbors, nor have they threatened us.

    But, one thing we do know for sure is that of all the countries that do possess nuclear weapons, the United States of America, My Country, has been the only country ever to prove that they will use chemical (Viet Nam), nuclear (WWII), or any other weapons of mass destruction. No other country has ever gone so far as to use a nuclear weapon.

    The Bush régime is trying to convince the people of My Country to fear another country, in order to get My Country to do what none of its previous leaders has ever attempted to persuade it to do; and that is to perform an unprovoked attack against another country in an effort to steal it’s wealth for the benefit of a few, already wealthy men; through the sacrifice of the blood of our young men and women.

    I suppose that after they have accomplished their goal and taken control of all the riches of Iraq, they will try to justify it all by pointing out how much My Country will benefit economically from cheap oil prices and such. And when they do, they should be reminded that if they would have made the necessary changes and pursued alternative forms of energy, they could have accomplished more, and without the cost of our young men and women who won’t be here to enjoy the benefits of continued use of fossil fuels. Well, I must confess, if they did that, there would be no need for oilmen, would there.

    If they aren’t careful, this concept of larger, stronger countries taking over smaller, weaker countries to gain their fruits might catch on; then where will we be? We might have to use our own weapons of mass destruction again.

    Larry Mattox
    Columbus, Oh, US

    http://www.newint.org/index4.html

  7. People commenting on the cartoon issue seems to forget a few things :
    1) These cartoons aren’t, by far, the first ones to target Muslims or even their prophet.
    2) So the real question is why are some twelve satyrical drawings – talentless for the most part- stirring so much passion right now ?
    The answer is double :
    a) In Europe and in Western countries, the Muslim immigrants are the target of right wing xenophobia and suffer from discrimination. Their situation has clearly worsened since 9/11, because they are all treated/stigmatized like terrorists. It is not a case that the story begun in Danemark, because there the right wing People’s Party is particularly xenophobic and the executive authorities couldn’t stay in power without its support. The Jylland’s Post who published the cartoons is a right wing tabloid who was looking for provocation. The Muslims reactions among immigrants of Europe was a call for respect, more or less like the civil rights movement was for the black people in the US.
    b) In the rest of the world, where the movement spreaded, it depends upon the local situation, that is true. But the popular support is too wide to be seen as merely the result of some governement pulling strings. There IMO, anticolonialist feelings dominates, they are fed up by the arrogance of the West and by Bush bullying attitude, be it in Iraq, or in the I/P conflict, or with Iran. IMO, what we see are the signs of a more general movement of resistence to the imperialism of the West.

  8. Precisely Christiane, if Muslims suffered from xenophobic discrimination before, won’t they suffer even more now that the Europeans see them as a bigger threat. And won’t Turkey’s EU admission prospects suffer from the fear to have inside an enormous mass of people that are all about earning respect through violence and intimidation?
    Do you think that the dairy Danish workers that lost their jobs due to the broad boycott in Arab lands have more respect for the immigrants now?
    Who wants a neighbor that gangs up with his friends against you with violence, boycotts, and fatwas?

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