CHAOS!
I hear a lot of chatter about whether "chaos in Iraq" would hurt [insert party name here] if [U.S. pulls out of Iraq OR U.S. troops still in Iraq]. The premise of this question is that "the American people" will be troubled by "chaos in Iraq." But this is a non-starter. Think about it. We don't see Iraq on the teevee now--not really. It's too dangerous for any kind of reporting or television coverage. And there are more than 150,000 U.S. combat troops there. If those troops leave, Iraq will disappear altogether from the teevee and front pages.
Do you really think that the MSM will cover "chaos in Iraq" instead of missing white women, Britney's comeback, [insert latest celebrity scandal here]?
In purely political terms, the idea that "chaos in Iraq," or a "full-blown civil war in Iraq," will hurt one party or the other is nonsense. (Morality is a different matter, of course.)
posted by Number Three @ 7:26 AM
4 Comments:
OK, on one level I agree with this. Americans' extraordinary capacity for international indifference and the media's inability to sustain detailed coverage of Iraq do limit the potential political consequences of withdrawal.
On the other hand, the media loves simple narratives, especially ones fed to them by the right-wing noise machine. E.g., Democrats are the surrender-pussies who lost Iraq and abetted genocide while freedom-loving Republicans fought heroically to bring democracy to the middle east. Since these narratives work best in the absence of actual information or reportage, they'll thrive in a post-occupation environment.
Part of the problem is that the MSM are not recognizing that here already is absolute and utter catastrophic chaos in Iraq with over 2 million displaced, probably over a 1 million dead (as a result of killing or the war's effects), hardly any electricity, gas shortages, problems with keeping water running, cholera... Why aren't they covering this part of the reality of Iraq? Because American soldiers are there so it would be seen as unpatriotic to do so and most advertisers don't want their products associated with American-made chaos. Remember how the American media lavished coverage on the chaos that resulted from one stinkin', puny sniper in the DC area a few years back? If they applied the same calculus to covering Iraq, there would be little room left for Britanny. Personally I suspect that WHEN we leave (not IF), maybe after 4 or 5 more years, the media will finally cover the CONTINUING civil slaughter that will result, but because they haven't covered the real numbers of the slaughter all along the right-wingnutusphere will say "See, we told you so." And they'll get some traction.
I'm still not convinced. Don't underestimate the inherent isolationism of the mostly silent majority. If they feel threatened, they will support an aggressive foreign policy. But they don't have any stomach for long wars.
Just a side note on the word Chaos that may shed additional light on the situation in Iraq. The word Chaos is first recorded in Hesiod's Theogony (ca. 700 BC) as the stuff that's just there before there's anything else, out of which all of creation is born. It's a neuter noun (the only neuter in Hesiod's pantheon) and its etymology comes from the root meaning either "gaping/void" or "spongee stuff." Out of Chaos comes the first primordial elements: Gaia (Earth/feminine), Nyx (Night/Femine), Erebos (Darkness of Underworld/Masculine), Tartaros (Lowest region of Underworld/masculine) and Eros (male potency). Gaia through parthenogenisis then gives birth to the visible elements: Ouranos (Sky/masculine), the Mountains and Pontos (Sea/Masculine). Ouranos then runs the cosmos as an unruly tyrant until castrated by his son Kronos, who then, like his old man, runs the cosmos like an unruly tyrant, who is then followed by the more enlightened strong-man Zeus. Hesiod doesn't tell us how long it took to get from Chaos to Zeus, but elsewhere Hesiod speaks of the 5 Ages of Man as being long epochs, so we can assume the same is true of the various epochs From Chaos to Gaia to Ouranos to Kronos to Zeus. Of course democracy is no where to be seen in this picture. All this is to say that Chaos is truly the right word to apply to Iraq.
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