SADDAM or CONDI?

Issandr al-Amrani thinks the Bushists’ new policy should be called SADDAM.
Our commenter here jkoch thinks it should be called CONDI: Continued Obfuscation to Nullify Democratic Irreverence.
Any other ideas?

25 thoughts on “SADDAM or CONDI?”

  4. The Perp Boys, Dubya, Dick, and Don:
    DUBYA. Dimwit Undone By Yahoo Absolutism
    DICK. Dystopian Ideologue, Corrupt Kleptocrat
    DON. Deliberately Opaque Newspeaker
    Their Svengali/Rasputin:
    KARL. Keep Asserting Repetitive Lunacy
    Their jaded, janitorial clean-up crew:
    COLIN. Complicit Obsequious Lying Impotent Non-entity
    CONDI. Credulous Ornament Needing Deprogramming Immediately
    And their no-longer-useful foil:
    SADDAM. Scapegoat Accomplice Dutifully Dispatched After Milking

  6. I vote for SADDAM (Sunni Arab-Dominated Dictatorships Against the Mullahs). The CONDI acronym is no less true, yet SADDAM wins, IMHO since it is going to be the primary enabler and accomplice in the US/Israeli plans for 2007. The clock has been ticking for quite a while now.

  8. Frank,
    Interesting piece, thanks. Have you seen this:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/washington/30iran.html?ei=5094&en=d0c65b478050ef58&hp=&ex=1170219600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
    or this:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/world/middleeast/29iranians.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=6f1bbc475aa92694&hp=&ex=1170133200&oref=slogin&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
    Obviously NYT is doing its JudithMilleresque duty to you-know-who.
    By the way, does anyone understand why the US treasury always decides to pick 2 or 3 Iranian banks and say that they are doing “illegal transactions”. The Iranian constitution does not allow private banks, i.e. they all belong and are run by the government, i.e. they are all one and the same. They play “competetitive incentives” games to lure clients to open accounts, etc. But these tricksters must know that they are all run by boards that are appointed by the Central Bank and the ministry of treasury, and their assets are government guaranteed. Is this just another USBS game?

  9. Reference for above:
    “Article 44
    The economy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is to consist of three sectors: state, cooperative, and private, and is to be based on systematic and sound planning. The state sector is to include all large-scale and mother industries, foreign trade, major minerals, banking, insurance, power generation, dams and large-scale irrigation networks, radio and television, post, telegraph and telephone services, aviation, shipping, roads, railroads and the like; all these will be publicly owned and administered by the State. The …”

  12. You gotta love the white man’s concern for the well-being of those sand-dwelling barbarians:
    “whether our own Jason Zengerle or National Review’s Michael Rubin is right about whether the American press judges U.S. abuse of Iraqi prisoners and random Iraqi mass murders of other Iraqis equally. Chotiner thinks that Rubin is right and that Americans are more critical of wrongs done in our name than what comes naturally to the Iraqis.
    That’s the point, isn’t it? I actually believe that Arabs are feigning outrage when they protest what they call American (or Israeli) “atrocities.” They are not shocked at all by what in truth must seem to them not atrocious at all. It is routine in their cultures. That comparison shouldn’t comfort us as Americans. We have higher standards of civilization than they do. But the mutilation of bodies and beheadings of people picked up at random in Iraq does not scandalize the people of Iraq unless victims are believers in their own sect or members of their own clan. And the truth is that we are less and less shocked by the mass death-happenings in the world of Islam. Yes, that’s the bitter truth. Frankly, even I–cynic that I am–was shocked in the beginning by the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq. But I am no longer surprised. And neither are you.”
    http://www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=58683

  14. Thanks David
    Yes I did see the articles in NYT.
    Syria is a member of what the EU calls “The Neighbourhood”. There is a marvellous piece of road as you are heading into Damascus from Homs that has all the car dealerships one after another. I was entranced to see the brands on sale. Iran Khodro beside Jaguar and Ford.
    Iran has just bought 150 trains from the Germans and they will be mightily peeved if some hero in an F-16 zaps them.( especially if it is before they are paid for)
    On the other hand it is most interesting to read the US newspapers speculating on Mr Cheney’s imminent trip to the funny farm.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012901449.html?nav=hcmodule
    Still I am told Democracy is where people get the government they deserve.

  15. This piece by Senator Lugar is a classic statement of American foreign policy, even including an extended football metaphor. Lugar offers a frank description of “our broader strategic objectives:”
    “Even as the president’s Baghdad strategy goes forward, we need to plan for a potent redeployment of U.S. forces in the region to defend oil assets, target terrorist enclaves, deter adventurism by Iran and provide a buffer against regional sectarian conflict. In the best case, we could supplement bases in the Middle East with troops stationed outside urban areas in Iraq. Such a redeployment would allow us to continue training Iraqi troops and delivering economic assistance, but it would not require us to interpose ourselves between Iraqi sectarian factions.”
    He is saying in the plainest possible terms that what happens to the nation and people of Iraq is not nearly as important as what happens to our oil supply:
    “the president and Congress must reach a consensus on how to protect our broader strategic interests regardless of what happens in those Baghdad neighborhoods . . .”
    To men like Lugar, we Americans are the sole protagonists. The whole world revolves around our needs and aspirations. This is completely natural, and in everyone’s best interest. The important thing is not to let passing phenomena such as the rise and fall of foreign civilizations, hundreds of thousand of casualties, and millions of refugees distract us from performing our eternal role as global lord and master. After all, as Homer said, “A generation of men is like a generation of leaves; the wind scatters some leaves upon the ground, while others the burgeoning wood brings forth – and the season of spring comes on. So of men one generation springs forth and another ceases.”

  18. Chaps
    This sounds like common sense to me.
    THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
    Published: January 31, 2007
    Here’s a little foreign policy test. I am going to describe two countries — “Country A” and “Country B” — and you tell me which one is America’s ally and which one is not.
     Let’s start: Country A actively helped the U.S. defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and replace it with a pro-U.S. elected alliance of moderate Muslims. Country A regularly holds sort-of-free elections. Country A’s women vote, hold office, are the majority of its university students and are fully integrated into the work force.
    On 9/11, residents of Country A were among the very few in the Muslim world to hold spontaneous pro-U.S. demonstrations. Country A’s radical president recently held a conference about why the Holocaust never happened — to try to gain popularity. A month later, Country A held nationwide elections for local councils, and that same president saw his candidates get wiped out by voters who preferred more moderate conservatives. Country A has a strategic interest in the success of the pro-U.S., Shiite-led, elected Iraqi government. Although it’s a Muslim country right next to Iraq, Country A has never sent any suicide bombers to Iraq, and has long protected its Christians and Jews. Country A has more bloggers per capita than any country in the Muslim Middle East.
    The brand of Islam practiced by Country A respects women, is open to reinterpretation in light of modernity and rejects Al Qaeda’s nihilism.
    Now Country B: Country B gave us 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11. Country B does not allow its women to drive, vote or run for office. It is illegal in Country B to build a church, synagogue or Hindu temple. Country B helped finance the Taliban.
    Country B’s private charities help sustain Al Qaeda. Young men from Country B’s mosques have been regularly recruited to carry out suicide bombings in Iraq. Mosques and charities in Country B raise funds to support the insurgency in Iraq. Country B does not want the elected, Shiite-led government in Iraq to succeed. While Country B’s leaders are pro-U.S., polls show many of its people are hostile to America — some of them celebrated on 9/11. The brand of Islam supported by Country B and exported by it to mosques around the world is the most hostile to modernity and other faiths.
    Question: Which country is America’s natural ally: A or B?
    Country A is, of course. Country A is Iran. Country B is Saudi Arabia.
    Don’t worry. I know that Iran has also engaged in terrorism against the U.S. and that the Saudis have supported America at key times in some areas. The point I’m trying to make, though, is that the hostility between Iran and the U.S. since the overthrow of the shah in 1979 is not organic. By dint of culture, history and geography, we actually have a lot of interests in common with Iran’s people. And I am not the only one to notice that.
    Because the U.S. has destroyed Iran’s two biggest enemies — the Taliban and Saddam — “there is now a debate in Iran as to whether we should continue to act so harshly against the Americans,” Mohammad Hossein Adeli, Iran’s former ambassador to London, told me at Davos. “There is now more readiness for dialogue with the United States.”
    More important, when people say, “The most important thing America could do today to stabilize the Middle East is solve the Israel-Palestine conflict,” they are wrong. It’s second. The most important thing would be to resolve the Iran-U.S. conflict.
    That would change the whole Middle East and open up the way to solving the Israel-Palestine conflict, because Iran is the key backer of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Syria. Iran’s active help could also be critical for stabilizing Iraq.
    This is why I oppose war with Iran. I favor negotiations. Isolating Iran like Castro’s Cuba has produced only the same result as in Cuba: strengthening Iran’s Castros. But for talks with Iran to bear fruit, we have to negotiate with Iran with leverage.
    How do we get leverage? Make it clear that Iran can’t push us out of the gulf militarily; bring down the price of oil, which is key to the cockiness of Iran’s hard-line leadership; squeeze the hard-liners financially. But all this has to be accompanied with a clear declaration that the U.S. is not seeking regime change in Iran, but a change of behavior, that the U.S. wants to immediately restore its embassy in Tehran and that the first thing it will do is grant 50,000 student visas for young Iranians to study at U.S. universities.
    Just do that — and then sit back and watch the most amazing debate explode inside Iran. You can bet the farm on it.

  19. Common sense from that great self-important no-nothing overblown bag of hot gaseous substance, Thomas Friedman? OK, I’ll try to read it, but if I start getting that familiar queasy feeling that usually goes along with reading or listening to him, I will stop immediately. This is a new laptop and I don’t want to throw up all over it.

  20. “How do we get leverage? Make it clear that Iran can’t push us out of the gulf militarily; bring down the price of oil, which is key to the cockiness of Iran’s hard-line leadership; squeeze the hard-liners financially.”
    Here’s the nub of it alright. iran must be forced to capitulate to the demands of global (US) capitalism, in the same way that our allies the despotic old Saudi royal family has done. Then we can let them (the few chosen ones that is) in on the game. The real threat AS ALWAYS is not fascism, totalitarianism, Islamic extremism or any of those other scary sounding things – it’s socialism, or if you prefer, actual democracy.
    I expect the reason Cheney considers Iraq a success is because we have created conditions there which are practically the opposite of socialism or democracy. He is happy with a society reduced to the Darwinian minimum of survival of the fittest. He sees great potential in it.

  21. This is why I oppose war with Iran. I favor negotiations. Isolating Iran like Castro’s Cuba has produced only the same result as in Cuba: strengthening Iran’s Castros.
    I think this is common sense. There is a great tendency to draw false analogies with the Munich agreement in 1938, when discussing Iran, where Chamerlain got conned. This allows anyone who wants to imagine himself as Churchillian to think War.
    Churchill however says “Jaw Jaw is better than War War”
    Mr Cheney is happy that he has eliminated a military enemy of Israel and generated large profits for the carpetbagging companies who haven’t delivered on their reconstruction contracts.

  22. Guys
    This guy is howling out loud that us plebs in the rest of the world have seen the future and he doesnt like it. It is called slamming the stable door after the horse has bolted.
    My reaction can be summarised as “Aw Bullshit! Bush blew it and wrecked the Brand Image”.
    David Brooks in NYT
    After Vietnam, Americans turned inward. Having lost faith in their leadership class, many Americans grew suspicious of power politics and hesitant about projecting American might around the world.
    The Vietnam syndrome was real. It lasted all of five years — the time between the fall of Saigon and the election of Ronald Reagan.
    Today, Americans are disillusioned with the war in Iraq, and many around the world predict that an exhausted America will turn inward again. Some see a nation in permanent decline and an end to American hegemony. At Davos, some Europeans apparently envisioned a post-American world.
    Forget about it. Americans are having a debate about how to proceed in Iraq, but we are not having a strategic debate about retracting American power and influence. What’s most important about this debate is what doesn’t need to be said. No major American leader doubts that America must remain, as Dean Acheson put it, the locomotive of the world.
    ……………….
    The U.S. has no material need to reconsider its dominant role in the world. The U.S. military still has no serious rivals, even after the strains of Iraq. The economy is humming along nicely.
    The U.S. has no cultural need to retrench. Vietnam sparked a broad cultural revolution, a shift in values and a loss of confidence. Iraq has not had the same effect. Many Americans have lost faith in the Bush administration and in this particular venture, but there has been no generalized loss of faith in the American system or in American goodness.
    …………
    Finally, there has been no change in America’s essential nature. As Robert Kagan writes in his masterful book “Dangerous Nation,” America has never really been an isolationist or aloof nation. The United States has always exercised as much power as it could. It has always coupled that power with efforts to spread freedom. And Americans have always fought over how best to fulfill their mission as the vanguard of progress.
    ……….
    When you look further into the future, you see that the next president’s big efforts will not be about retrenchment, but about expansion. They’ll be about expanding the U.S. military, expanding the diplomatic corps, asking for more shared sacrifice, creating new interagency bureaus that will give America more nation-building capacity.
    In short, the U.S. has taken its share of blows over the past few years, but the isolationist dog is not barking. The hegemon will change. The hegemon will do more negotiating. But the hegemon will live.

  23. The NYT is a balanced newspaper. I get much pleasure from it.
    Alongside Mr Brooks article they publish an editorial that concludes:
    Mr. Bush’s bullying may play well to his ever shrinking base. But his disastrous war in Iraq has done so much damage to America’s credibility — and so strained its resources— that it no longer frightens America’s enemies. The only ones really frightened are Americans and America’s friends.

  24. Frank, Brooks is basically saying the same thing as Dick Lugar, to which I have more or less the same reaction. Except in Brooks’ case, it sounds more like a pathetic attempt to shore up his own self image. It reminds me of Al Franken’s old Stuart Smalley character on Saturday Night Light Live: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”
    Speaking of Al Franken, he’s just declared his candidacy in the ’08 race against Norm Coleman. This is gonna be a fun one to watch, I promise you.

Comments are closed.