Chicago Sun-Times liberal columnist Mark Brown wonders if perhaps Bush was right all along about Iraq.

Naomi Klein remains in denial. "Because if it weren't for the invasion, Iraqis would not even have the freedom to vote for their liberation, and then to have that vote completely ignored," she says. But will their vote be ignored? The anti-war pundits never saw anything good coming from the toppling of Saddam. The Iraqis and their resources would just be exploited, as if they weren't under Saddam and the UN blood-for-oil program. What the anti-war pundits failed to understand was that the Bush administration couldn't completely control what happens post-Saddam.

Klein won't admit she was pro-Sadr and anti-Sistani. As Jonathan Schell writes "Having brought the Administration to heel, Sistani next faced a challenge from within Shiite ranks. In spring 2004, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr launched an armed insurrection against the occupation. Sistani stood by while American forces badly bloodied Sadr's forces in several weeks of fighting in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, and then he successfully summoned both sides to join in a truce in which the forces of both were withdrawn from the city. He granted a meeting to Sadr, who offered a guarded fealty. At the same time, Sistani expressed a sort of vague acceptance of Sadr's enemy, the US- and UN-appointed interim government.
...
In sum, the election on January 30 -- conceived by Sistani, forced upon a reluctant Bush Administration by Sistani, and defended by Sistani (in concert with American forces) against both Shiite and Sunni insurrections -- was first and foremost a kind of Shiite uprising. It was an astonishingly successful revolt against subjugation and repression that Shiites have suffered in Iraq at the hands of foreigners and domestic minorities alike. That this uprising took the form of a peaceful election rather than a bloody rebellion is owing to the shrewdness, and possibly the wisdom, of Sistani."

However, the Bush administation was smart to change course - even though it would anger authoritarian allies like the Saudis and King Abdullah of Jordan - and stick to the January 30 date, despite pleas from the New York Times editorial board and many others to push the date back.

Schell again: "The rudiments of a new governing authority in Iraq have appeared for the first time since the war that felled Saddam. It's unknowable whether such an authority can surmount the sectarian divisions it faces -- in effect, creating an Iraqi nation -- or, if it does succeed, whether it will invite American forces to remain. What we can know is that from now on it is Iraqis, not Americans, who will be making the most fundamental decisions in their country." Once free of Saddam and his minority Tikriti clan of the minority Sunnis, Iraqis already were making fundamental decisions.

If I didn't think toppling Saddam was worth it, I'd just list the costs, day after day, as Juan Cole does at his blog. Michael Young provides a nice take-down of Cole over at Hit and Run.

I'm one of those guys who never ever cries, but last year, at home on the couch with a cold I caught the TV movie version of Colm Toibin's novel The Blackwater Lightship and - I hate to admit - my eyes got all watery. (Ever see Woody Allen's film Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask? The workers sitting around playing cards in my tear ducts must have exclaimed "What the fuck!?" after the sirens sounded.) Gina McKee in the lead role was especially fantastic as the stoic and yet oddly innocent and modernly Irish Helen.

The plot according to IMD:
"Declan (Keith McErlean) is in his final stages of AIDS and decides to spend the last of his days at his grandmother Dora's (Angela Lansbury) house. His mother Lily (Dianne Wiest) and sister Helen (Gina McKee) come to be with him, as well as two of his friends, Paul (Sam Robards) and Larry (Brian F. O'Byrne). As his family learns to accept the fact that he's dying, they begin to mend their relationships with each other and to forget a long-time misunderstanding that had kept them apart for many years."

Colm Toibin has written a particularly strange yet good review of Christopher Hitchens's new collection.

Here's Hitchens's unique, and correct in my mind, perspective on the state of the Left

I think this is more than just instinct on my part, the reaction of a lot of Democrats and liberals to the September 11th events was obviously in common with everyone else, revulsion, disgust, hatred, and so forth. But when they consider politically I think a lot of them couldn't say this, but they thought that's the end of our agenda for a little while. We're not going to be talking very much about welfare and gay marriage. We're going to be living in law and order times. Now the instinct is to think well, that must favor the right wing. Surely, that creates a climate for the conservatives--law and order and warfare and mobilization and so forth. In fact, the Second World War probably was a tremendous asset to the Democratic Left and presumably when the Right was so opposed to going into it because they know there's a relationship between social mobilization and warfare. But the Left is too dumb to see this in this case. And then some of them are crackpotted enough to think that if it comes out like that, maybe it was all fixed to come out like this.

Terry Eagleton, who first infected me with leftist thought when I was but a wee lad, would probably wretch after reading Toibin's review. He had reviewed Toibin a few times when Toibin came on the scene and obviously thought he's a great talent. Eagleton, though, has been squandering his talent lately, as Norman Geras has been documenting.

Also, Fareed Zakaria on the Daily Show. Is Jon Stewart succumbing to the dark side?

I jest, but Krugman-and-DeLong nemesis Donald L. Luskin appears to be a dues-paying member of the dark side:

Or in the case of Social Security, suppose you are a struggling young African American working for minimum wage. You urgently want to own stocks, so you can start building a nest egg for your family. But you have no money to invest, because Social Security taxes have sucked up anything you could have set aside from your small earnings. So you manage to borrow some money, and you invest it in stocks. That's a loan. That's speculation. And that's what the opponents of personal accounts would prefer for America.

They would? I would prefer Clinton's out-of-left-field, briefly-floated, shock-inducing trial balloon of socializing the means of production via government investment of Social Security funds in the stock market, rather than this private account thing. Probably most people don't have the time, knowledge or connections to successfully invest in the stock market. What the privatizers desire is for some of the poor and middle class to invest their payroll taxes and later receive less retirement benefits than they would under the current system, because they "invested poorly." After spending a boatload of taxes transitioning to the private account system. But there will be less workers per retiree in the future? What about the record productivity gains over the past decades? It all went to Capital? You don't say.

Ahmed Rashid on NPR's Fresh Air. I don't agree
with many of his views but he's a smart, interesting guy.

When In Rome Part Deux (or the 1920s redux)

At one of the Inaugural balls:

[Rich] Little said he missed and adored the late President Ronald Reagan and "I wish he was here tonight, but as a matter of fact he is," and he proceeded to impersonate Reagan, saying, "You know, somebody asked me, 'Do you think the war on poverty is over?' I said, 'Yes, the poor lost.' " The crowd went wild.

Clinton's welfare reform, the push to privatize Social Security. Yes, the poor are getting screwed, but this sounds a little too farouche, even for our dear Republican party loyalists.

Little's joke reminded me of a classic Onion headline: War on Drugs Over: Drugs Win.

(via David Corn)

David Aaronovitch writes about Bush's inaugural address.

He also reacts to Eric Hobsbawm's reaction to it.

When in Rome

Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out on Summers' talk, saying later that if she hadn't left, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

That's Larry Summers, one of Clinton's Secretaries of the Treasury and now president of Harvard. Quite the charmer, Summers made remarks at a conference Friday suggesting that biological differences between the sexes may be one explanation for why fewer women succeed in mathematic and science careers.

Summers is probably just trying to get hip to what he sees as the conservative times. Conservatives are attempting to portray Social Security as "dependency-inducing" and one of the sources of an immoral culture, a sign of the times. (Clinton did pave the way by "ending welfare-as-we-know-it.") But then there's gay marriage. Fiscally, the country has become more conservative (see Stephen S. Cohen & J. Bradford DeLong's piece in the January/February 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly). Socially, though, the Sixties revolution prevailed, for the most part.

Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is a good, entertaining movie. You'll enjoy it even if you didn't care for The Royal Tenenbaums. It's weird that Steve Zissou chooses "Kingsley" for his (supposed) son's new first name. There's Ben Kingsley and Kingsley Amis, but it's such a rare name. The movie's soundtrack is great too, as it usually is in Anderson's films.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is coming this July. Check out the trailer. Nothing like seeing spoiled kids get their comeuppance. Nothing like singing Oompah-Loompahs.

One thing I forgot to mention in the wrap-up was the film Finding Neverland which stars Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell, Dustin Hoffman, and Ian Hart.

Sort of unrelated, Christopher Hitchens wrote an obit for Susan Sontag.

Year's end wrap-up

TV has become pretty awful. Michelle Cottle writes the piece I wish I had done by diagnosing Dr. Phil's bullying style and his popularity.

On the bright side, Heather Havrilesky writes about how comedy drew blood this year.

For drama, the only show I'll watch besides the Wire, while vegging out and relaxing is Law and Order SVU. Alessandra Stanley places it at the #2 spot on her year's end list:

2. 'Law & Order SVU' The sex-crimes spinoff has displaced the shopworn original as the best Dick Wolf cop show. Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay have a humane stoicism that contrasts nicely with the show's backdrop of murder and sexual perversion.

In the real world, things aren't so bad as people often make them out to be. "People power" won out in Ukraine and Afghanistan (with helpful assistance from the West). Democratic reform is on the table in the Middle East and the autocratic governments there are on notice.

At least outgoing Secretary Powell acknowledged genocide was going on in Sudan.

President Bush signed into law a bill authorizing $82 million in grants aimed at preventing suicide among young people.

General Pinochet was indicted in Chile. (I happened to catch the searing Roman Polanski/Sigorney Weaver film Death and the Maiden last night on IFC. It's based on Ariel Dorfman's play and the script was co-written by him and Matthew Yglesias's father, Rafael.

No doubt there's stuff I'm forgetting.

This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Rap and Metal are two of the lumpenproles' main "(sub-)cultural expressions" in these days of late capitalism. Both lost iconic figures this year. First to go was Ol' Dirty Bastard, formerly of the Wu Tang Clan. As the Onion writes, "Hip-hop's irrepressible id, Ol' Dirty Bastard lived his life like it was some sort of gonzo performance-art piece. Onstage and off, he always played rap's deranged court jester, a role that no doubt felt like a straitjacket at times. ODB turned self-destruction into a sublime art form, and while it's not surprising that he died, it's still terribly sad."

Flavor Flav was a court jester, too.

Former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott was gunned down 30 seconds into a show in Columbus, Ohio, this past week.

"Despite a drizzle and temperatures in the 40s, more than 200 people turned up for a vigil Thursday night in the club's parking lot.

Shawn Sweeney, 22, played "old-school Pantera" on an acoustic guitar and a half-dozen young men held a blue tarp over his head and sang along.

"This is beautiful, this is absolutely beautiful," Sweeney said, referring to the growing crowd.

At one point, a naked young man stood in the middle of the street, arms raised, repeatedly cursing [shooter] Gale. The crowd cheered boisterously, and the man took off in a full sprint across the parking lot as four police officers gave chase.

He was soon tackled and a man in the crowd yelled out, "We got your bond, dude!" as the streaker was led off in handcuffs."

His death devastated fans of metal.

Doug Sabolick of the metal band A Life Once Lost noted, "Dimebag was the one who inspired me to pick up the ax, the bottle and the joint."

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

My repeated links to pieces by establishment commentators like Tom Friedman and Fareed Zakaria makes me uncomfortable, but they're understandble given the situation - a practically nonexistent left, a regnant late capitalism, and a massive civil war in the Muslim world.

Recently, Friedman proposed a deterministic materialist, or rather liquid, theory about the oil base of the global political economy and its relation to the political superstructure. An energy-independent America or Europe is probably a pipe-dream, but Friedman suggests we give it a go anyway. It is notable that he has failed to mention how Iraq's oil supply will undermine the Saudis' status as top dog.

"You give me an America that is energy-independent and I will give you sharply reduced oil revenues for the worst governments in the world. I will give you political reform from Moscow to Riyadh to Tehran. Yes, deprive these regimes of the huge oil windfalls on which they depend and you will force them to reform by having to tap their people instead of oil wells. These regimes won't change when we tell them they should. They will change only when they tell themselves they must.

When did the Soviet Union collapse? When did reform take off in Iran? When did the Oslo peace process begin? When did economic reform become a hot topic in the Arab world? In the late 1980's and early 1990's. And what was also happening then? Oil prices were collapsing.

In November 1985, oil was $30 a barrel, recalled the noted oil economist Philip Verleger. By July of 1986, oil had fallen to $10 a barrel, and it did not climb back to $20 until April 1989. "Everyone thinks Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviets," said Mr. Verleger. "That is wrong. It was the collapse of their oil rents." It's no accident that the 1990's was the decade of falling oil prices and falling walls."

So Clinton's ballyhooed "economic miracle" was a result of low oil prices also?

Fareed Zakaria writes about the U.N., which is embroiled in a scandal about oil. He also discusses Paul Rusesabaginan, an "ordinary" Rwandan, a hotel manager, who was able to shelter and save more than 1,200 people—Tutsis and Hutus—in the midst of the Rwandan genocide.

The war over the New Deal

MaxSpeak lists the various players in the battle over Social Security.

Insane in the Ukraine* (or the plight of the buffer state)

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's parliament on Saturday declared invalid the disputed presidential election that triggered a week of growing street protests and legal maneuvers, raising the possibility that a new vote could be held in this former Soviet republic.

Is it not radical to pass along the thoughts of the Iranian journalist below, even though he's rebelling against of one of America's enemies and one of the world's rogue regimes? Is it silly to ask such a question?

Things are looking better for Ukraine's 48 million inhabitants, at least to some. To others on the left, the fact that Ukrainians would have a general strike in order to "globalize" and integrate further into the West and hook up with the IMF and the dreaded Washington Consensus is no cause for celebration. Anything that makes the hyperpower look good is bad. It's a truism.

Putin was against the removal of Saddam Hussein, once dictator of the Saudi's Sunni buffer state against the 73 million Shias of Iran, and now he's against the removal of his puppet regime in Ukraine. The irony is that the opposition would remove troops from Iraq.

It appears that Putin is backing down - Bush didn't do anything about his Czarist power grab a few months ago and the US is in general more conciliatory than it needs to be. We need a multilateral approach in "the war on terror" after all.

*heading stolen from Slate.

wonder if he pulped it

His remark reminds me of when I worked in a wood-pulp mill in western Iran during the early years of the Islamic revolution. In the first decade after 1979, many intellectuals, anticipating being arrested, cleared their bookshelves and left their "illegal" volumes on street corners. Piles of these books found their way to the mill, where we reduced them to pulp. One day, throwing books into the mill, I grasped a Farsi version of Marx's "Capital." Immediately, I knew it was my own copy; I recognized the book by its feel, it was so familiar to my touch.

Today's intellectuals, if they haven't turned to smoking opium or drinking homemade liquor, devote themselves to literature, primarily Farsi, European, Russian and South American.
...

The vast majority of people here cross their fingers for a sudden explosion, or pray for American successes in Iraq and Afghanistan to increase the price of suppression by the theocracy in Iran. But that is the limit.

red states = magical thinking

Weber used the term Entzauberung—“dis-enchantment”—to describe the way in which science and technology had inevitably displaced magical thinking. The new rationalism had the instrumental advantage of allowing the world to be mastered. But what the new thinking couldn’t provide was, in terms of lived experience, hardly less important. Rationality could do everything but make sense of itself.

Elizabeth Kolbert writes about Max Weber, the "bourgeois Marx."

Mon Dieu!

The excellent Doug Ireland translates what the fuss is
all about at Le Monde.

(via Marc Cooper)

Turning point, hinge moment, tipping point, etc.

Both Fareed Zakaria and Tom Friedman see "Fallujah" as a turning point/tipping point for Iraq. Pan back and it could be a hinge moment for the wider conflict between the decadent West and Islamic nihilism and its accompanying anarchy.

Q & A with Heather Havrilesky

(via Matt Welch)

Even though I grew up in Chicago and live here now, I went to college in Nashville for four years and lived in Austin, Texas for two and have to agree with Neal Pollack that the post-election "fuck the South" meme is wrongheaded.

(via Hit and Run)

Nation's Poor Win Election for Nation's Rich (or the pull of the superstructure)

45 percent of those with incomes under $50,000 voted for Bush, while 41 percent of those with incomes over $100,000 voted for Kerry.

It would have been nice had Kerry won the electoral college and lost the popular vote, which would have set in relief how the electoral college system distorts the "popular will." The fact that smaller states get two Senators each could then have been pointed at as well as a similar problem.

Hopefully, Bush will "spend some of his capital" on the creation of a Palestinian state. If so, Tony Blair will deserve some credit.

A majority of the voters seemed to decide to keep Bush because of the "war on terror." The large increase in Hispanics voting for Bush offset to some degree Bush's negatives on the economy and Iraq. His moderation on immigration policy probably helped here, but I heard an interesting theory that hard-working immigrants were drawn to the optimistic Republican themes on the economy, however counterintuitive that may sound.

As nice as it was to see the large voter turnout, I'm glad the contest is over between the Democrats' lacklaster candidate who argued Iraq was a mistake and the President who made Abu Ghraib shorthand for American torture of Muslims.