Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Lots and lots of good material in this Democratiya interview with Iraqi author and activist, Kanan Makiya. There's a ton there, but here's a little snip:
Kanan Makiya: You're right. And Alan, I'd go even further. It's not just the left. People like myself, those of us who went into Iraq after April and March 2003 as part of the effort to transform this country, have felt betrayed by Europe as a whole. We were attacked by the media of all the surrounding countries, countries utterly hostile to the sort of values on which Europe rests. Satellite stations dsstorted what was going on. The silence in Europe at that moment gave enormous sustenance to all those forces struggling against the transformation of Iraq. It enabled the Jihadis, the Ba'athists, the extreme Arab nationalists, and the Arab regimes, to say 'Look at the hostility of Europe to what the United States has done!' Europe made it possible to isolate not just the United States but everything that is represented by the west. Europe gave strength to the argument that it was a traditional colonist land grab or oil grab, which was nonsense, of course.
I would say that much of the strength of the hostility of the Jihadi movement, and of the forces that have made life so horrible in Iraq, came from the silence of Europe. Europe has a lot to answer for...
(via Mick Hartley)
"It's not just the left. [We] have felt betrayed by Europe as a whole. We were attacked by the media of all the surrounding countries, countries utterly hostile to the sort of values on which Europe rests. The silence in Europe ..." Kanan Makiya
Too, the title of the adjacent post here is "Discovering more silence at Columbia".
It's worth recalling that Makiya was the author of Republic of Fear as well as Cruelty and Silence, two well written and amply documented accounts of Saddam & Sons's reign in Iraq. So once again, emphasizing the de facto - and in notable cases the de jure - status quo and realpolitik alliances which permitted that reign of pronounced oppression, institutionalized rape rooms and other horrors, the cult of personality and accompanying controlling fear, both domestic and exported programs of terror, the enculturated and institutionalized hate and instability - domestically, regionally and intent upon a global reach as well.
Yet millions marched, hoping to further the silence and apathy, the status quo and realpolitik complacence. The theology of the Left is reified egoism and aestheticized apathy - proudly and assertively promoted as the latest "progressivism" du jour; the desiderata of even malignant forms of self-indulgence and apathy is an infinity. (emphases mine)