Dope

An assembly, an association, a crowd or a sect has no idea other than that which is whispered to it by someone; and that idea, that indication more or less intelligent of a purpose to pursue, or a means to employ, however much it propagates itself in the brain of an individual or the brains of a group, it remains the same. The whisperer is thus responsible for its direct effects. But the emotion joined to that idea which propagates with it does not remain the same in growing, it intensifies by a sort of mathematical progression... The heads of a gang or of a riot can reasonably be called to account for the shrewdness and the craft by which they have executed massacres, pillages, arsons, etc., but not always for the violence and extensiveness of injuries caused by criminal contagions. � Gabriel Tarde, L�opinion et la foule


In our last post, we made reference to reputation � a seemingly forgotten element in the cool analysis of social action. The defenders of the Iraq war, having failed to find any reason for the war in matters of state, or any reason that would convince civilized people, have recently fallen back on moral reasons for the war. Indeed, who could argue that Saddam Hussein is a moral ruler? He�s a tyrant who employs torture and imposes mortal hardships on his people while wasting their wealth on himself, his army, and his family.

But what of his accusers? What of the cabal of the eager, the Rumsfelds, Wolfowitzes and Bushes? And what of the Blairs?

Before we accept what they whisper to us like their syncophants and servants � like, that is, America�s corporate media � we might want to inquire into whether, in the very country, Iraq, which has provoked such moral dudgeon, the United States and Britain haven�t encouraged tyranny � haven�t, in fact, aided in the mass murder of dissidents and the setting up of the structure that Saddam Hussein has utilized to his own purpose.

Today�s sermon, kids, will come from Said Aburish, the journalist I mentioned yesterday. It concerns a very convoluted coup. The coup occurred in February, 1963. Its object was an Iraqi strongman, General Abdel Karim Kassem, or Qasim. Kassem had staged a coup himself, overthrowing Iraq�s king. Kassem proved to be that Western nightmare, a populist with a leaning to communism. Or at least so he was interpreted both by the CIA and by Nasser. Nasser was anti-Western, in his way, too, but he was definitely hostile to Communism. So as Kassem started redistributing land, got the British controlled Iraqi Petroleum Company to hand over a bigger share of the wealth to the state, and he stood, for a while, in the way of Arab nationalism. For the latter virtue, he was initially supported by the Brits. But by 1963, he had made it clear that he was getting cozier with Iraqi commies, and he was also not so necessary to stopping Nasser.

What ensued was a plot with multiple aspects. Nasser agreed to let the CIA train some military men in Cairo for the eventual overthrow of Kassem. Bagman for the CIA was none other than a young officer, Saddam Hussein. A CIA man named Critchfield oversaw the operation, supported by a military attach� in Baghdad, William Lakeland. The coup successfully implemented Ba�athist military power in the state. After it was over, it was purge time. A mini Phoenix program ensued, avant la lettre. Lists of leftist were compiled, with the CIA�s help, and maybe five thousand people were variously tortured and murdered. Among the makers of the lists, Aburish claims, was the friendly Time Magazine reporter on the spot, William McHale. Not himself a CIA officer, he did have friends in the agency, including his brother, Donald. Now, we have some doubts about this point, since according to the NewsMuseum, William McHale died in a plane wreck in 1962. In fact, due to the wondrous internet, we even have an account of how McHale died. The plane was sabotaged. The sabateur's name was Laurent, the target was an Italian petro-official named Mattei, and McHale was definitely not around to compile lists. That account is here, in French. Given this discrepancy of fact, I am a little wary of Aburish's account. Other accounts have been collected on the Center for Research on Globalization site. Whether Aburish is over-reaching with his McHale story or not, the upshot is, Americans contrived the very structure of tyranny they now seek, with freshfaced virtue, to overthrow.

The idea of an American occupation of Iraq has to evoke some horror in those who are familiar with this history. There�s a wonderful phrase of Rebecca West�s. She is reading the papers in the hospital, and she reads that the King of Yugoslavia has been assassinated, and she thinks of the assassination that started World War I, and other assassinations. And she writes: �I was really frightened, for all these earlier killings had either hastened doom towards me or prefigured it.�

Speaking of hastening doom, here's a story from the Guardian:


�In a meeting with American congressmen last week, the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, nominated three countries to be tackled after Iraq: Iran, Libya and Syria.
Mr Sharon also met John Bolton, the US under secretary of state, who reportedly told him that it will be "necessary" to deal with Syria, Iran and North Korea after an attack on Iraq. That puts Syria and Iran into the lead with two votes each, followed by Libya and North Korea, with only one.
The attraction of this approach is easy to see. After Afghanistan and Iraq, conquering Syria and Iran would create an unbroken chain of puppet regimes stretching from the Mediterranean to China.�