Iraq - ILANA MERCER

“To comprehend the hysterical mass contagion that is the war on Trump it’s essential to trace the contours of that other war, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom,’ and the way it was peddled to the American public.”—ILANA Mercer, “Beware The Atavistic Dynamics Undergirding Two American Wars,” The Ludwig von Mises Centre For Property and Freedom, June 21, 2017.
“The manufacturing of Fake News by the Deep State, circa 2017, is of a piece with the anatomy of the ramp-up to war in Iraq, in 2003. Except that back then, Republicans, joined by diabolical Democrats like Hillary Clinton, were the ones dreaming up Homer Simpson’s Third Dimension.”—ILANA Mercer, “The War On Trump: A Guide For Conservatives, Libertarians & Liberals,” The Liberty Conservative, June 17, 2017
“Another dynamic is at play in the region besides the Sunni-Shia divide. It is that between the forces of centralization and the forces of decentralization. As a rule, the U.S. sides with the former; the Arab people with whom we meddle generally side with the latter. Given the tribal, familial focus of their societies; Arabs are unlikely to abandon their particularism in favor of American statism.”—ILANA (May 29, 2015)
“This White House fetishizes Iraqi national unity. It believes that to succeed, Iraqis should be like Americans, forever imprisoned in an arranged, unhappy political marriage.”—ILANA (August 15, 2014)
“The sight of the Yazidis driven up the arid, exposed mountain range, chased by the militant Sunni of the Islamic State (ISIS), conjures Masada, A.D. 73. , where Jews chose to die on their own terms.”—ILANA (August 15, 2014)
“Iraq hasn’t suddenly ‘slipped back into’ this backward and benighted state. It was bombed there by a mulish military power which didn’t know Shiite from Shinola.”—ILANA (June 20, 2014)
“In the early days, Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri, provided the US with brick-thick ‘documentary intelligence’ showing that ‘Saddam did not have WMD.’ For presenting what turned out to be the only reliable intelligence in the sad saga of Iraq, Sabri was mocked and Saddam murdered.”—ILANA (March 16, 2012)
“While small-time functionaries like Scott McClellan can be big enough to express remorse, self-reproach is rare in the leaders they serve. A breast-beating Bush: now that would provide a truly teachable moment.”—ILANA (June 20, 2008)
“Petraeus is defending a pie-in-the-sky policy much more than a viable military mission. The former is beyond his purview. But then constitutional overreach is the name of the game for politicians and their pet generals.”—ILANA (April 8, 2008)
“The idea that we can rehabilitate what we ruined in Iraq is delusional—a function of a collective mindset that rejects reality and its lessons. We can’t fix Iraq because of what we wrought—because of the Original Sin of invasion. The sinner cannot turn savior.”—ILANA (October 12, 2007)
“The surge’s claim to success is more serendipity than science.”—ILANA (September 14, 2007)
“The Bush Administration has gone from discounting Iraqi civilian casualties to miscounting them. That must surely be counted as progress.”—ILANA (September 14, 2007)
“Like the remarkable Rep. Ron Paul, opponents of the invasion [of Iraq] were right because we cleaved to the kind of intellectual and moral principles that were immutably true before Sept. 11, after it, and forever after.”—ILANA (June , 2007)
On the Baker et al. Report: “In Iraq, every potential for conflict, however small, is fully realized. Arabs and Turkmen feud with Kurdish irredentists; the Badr Brigade battles the Mahdi Army, even though both are Shia. But why dwell on the negative? All this will be behind us once Israel cedes more territory to those plucky Palestinians.”—ILANA (December 8, 2006)
“In their depiction of the Middle East as a magically interconnected ecosystem, Baker et al. have conjured a construct every bit as mystical as Bush’s democracy-by-osmosis.”—ILANA (December 8, 2006)
“Saddam’s last major massacre was in 1991, during which only 3,000 Shiites were murdered. That’s less than the monthly quota under ‘democracy.’”—ILANA (December 1, 2006)
“Under our ministrations Iraq has gone from a secular to a religious country; from rogue to failed state.”—ILANA (December 1, 2006)
“When it comes to Iraq, the pols fetishize details, hang hopes on minutia and forfeit a deeper understanding of the place and people. The devil is not in the details—more troops, or better training for Iraqis—but in the big picture.”—ILANA (November 16, 2006)
“The government of Iraq doesn’t stand apart from the governed; it reflects them. The divisions that have riven the region for four millenniums are mirrored in the current government, and will continue to hobble every successive government that hunkers down in the Green Zone.”—ILANA (November 16, 2006)
“Remove one Saddam, who kept a lid on the cauldron of crime and corruption that is Iraq, and there’ll be another waiting to take his place—and another and another. Just like a shark’s teeth.”—ILANA (November 6, 2006)
“Hyping a war as a symbolic war gives it momentum—and facilitates its expansion beyond regional confines.”—ILANA (July 16, 2006)
Person of the Year: “The Average Iraqi is a tragic hero, not a Randian hero. His image should be seared in the minds of men with a conscience. He is the repository of state evil; first Saddam, and then a faraway president and his Revolutionary Assembly sealed his fate without his consent.”—ILANA (12.18.05 @ 2:01 am)
“Once a rogue state; Iraq is now a failed one, where any faction that imagines its wishes are being frustrated goes out and kills its foes. Freedom is on the march.”—ILANA (December 6, 2005)
“Prior to Bush’s invasion, I didn’t give a tinker’s toss what Iraqis did to Saddam. He was their baggage. But now that this burlesque of justice [Saddam’s trial] is branded ‘made-in-America,’ it’s a Mark of Cain on all of us.”—ILANA (December 6, 2005)
“Bush and his devotees continually compare the carnage in Iraq to the constitutional cramps of early America: Yes, the hoots, hollers, and blasts emanating from members of Iraq’s tribal troika capture to a tee the tone of the debates in, what’s that document called? The Fedayeen Papers?”—ILANA (October 12, 2005)
Again, “on the continual comparisons between the carnage in Iraq and the constitutional cramps of early America: Why didn’t it occur to me? Only a fool would fail to trace the philosophical link between the warring Mohammedans and the followers of John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu.”—ILANA (October 12, 2005)
“Let’s ignore Bush’s reverse Midas touch, and assume for the sake of argument that his ‘project’ has not whittled Iraqi liberties. If indeed we’ve subsidized ‘freedom’ for Iraqis and fought their battles—then we’ve also increased their impotence and diminished their initiative.”—ILANA (September 2, 2005)
“We have a solemn duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.”—ILANA (September 2, 2005)
“Bush excluded all ‘analysis’ (including from his own highly regarded experts) that didn’t comport with his ‘thesis’ about Iraq. He adopted (posthaste and post hoc) as his preferred sources of information corrupt parties like Egypt, Jordan, ex-KGB man Vladimir Putin, and Ahmad Chalabi. He ignored objective reality, invading an indisputably hobbled country, launching the invasion when ‘an effective inspections regime was in place’, after having ‘effectively caged Saddam.'”—ILANA MERCER, “HE CONTORTS, I DECIDE,” August 13, 2004
“Let’s leave aside the question of whether the invasion of Iraq was unjust and unattainable or merely mistaken and misguided. Why must we continue to feed this false idol with more lives? What does this make us? Worshippers of Moloch or mere fools?”—ILANA (December 1, 2004)
“To say that Saddam may have had WMD is quite different from advocating war based on those assumptions. It’s one thing to assume in error; it’s quite another to launch a war in which thousands would die based on mere assumptions, however widely shared.”—ILANA (June 25, 2003)
“Murder with majority approval is still murder.”—ILANA (April 23, 2003)
“… a brave nation fights only because it must; a cowardly nation fights because it can.”—ILANA (March 26, 2003)

CATEGORIES:

TAGS: