After contemplating the collection of photos from Falluja...
I wish I had a reaction I could write about. The US public had a chance to stop this and they didn't. Falluja is on their heads---that's what their `moral values' look like.
Dwayne wrote something about fear and intimidation that leads to the opposite of submission. I think the key is `hope' whether that is a delusion or not. If there is some hope of getting out of the grip of oppression, then maybe submission is the natural consequence. I think this somewhat depends on how you approach the impasse. If you start with a greater liberty and move to a position of less liberty, then hope functions as the means to submission. If you begin from a position of more oppression and seem to be moving away from it, then hope must act as a means to liberation.
I think hope is what is keeping Iraq down. Just barely enough people in Iraq still hope that the somehow the US occupation will become a means of liberation---and of course the US endlessly pretends that is so.
Now it's hope for elections in Iraq. Well the anti-Bush public tried elections in the US. The choice was between bad and terrible and everybody hoped it would just be bad. I can't see there being any difference for Iraq. They will face a similar choice. They hope it will turn out bad instead of terrible but likely as not they will get terrible anyway.
In some strange sense I can't figure out, it seems as if we are in the same place. The Bush regime is our shared enemy. But I can't quite get my head around that, because I don't want to face the consequences. On the other hand, I can't see how my reaction is much different from public reaction in Iraq.
The theory goes, if US pulled out of Iraq, there could be civil war. Consider the alternative. If the US doesn't pull out of Iraq there could be civil war. It seems to me Iraq and the anti-Bush US are being driven into the same trap by the same people. The trap consists in the idea that either we submit or face civil war.
But like the Iraqis, I still have hope and I suppose, I pretend that I can always start fighting tomorrow. But there will come a day when it will be too late. Is that day, today, or tomorrow? We all keep hoping it isn't today.
CG