Future daze ... 100% content ... all Rino Breebaart

I know, I'm turning into a bit of a standard blogger these days, posting links and quotes and not really presenting the quality public with quality content, which I know they deserve (the operative word is always Content); but since I'm reading Fisk's Pity the Nation and I'm a reasonably sane and sober supporter of the Fisker and his journalistic acumen (and btw, has Malkovich yet apologised for that impossibly prejudiced remark a year and a half ago?), I thought to do the grab and quote of his brief recent stint in Iraq, Iraq on verge of implode.

What, indeed, are we to make of a war that is turned into a fantasy by those who started it? As foreign workers pour out of Iraq for fear of their lives, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tells a press conference that hostage taking is having an "effect" on reconstruction. Effect! Oil pipeline explosions are now as regular as power cuts. In parts of Baghdad now, they have only four hours of electricity a day; the streets swarm with foreign mercenaries, guns poking from windows, shouting abusively at Iraqis who don't clear the way for them. This is the "safer" Iraq that Blair was boasting of the other day.

posted by rino breebaart # 12:46 pm

Comments:

The mercenaries are the ones to worry about. By setting up Iraq as the choice liberation zone, and by underestimating how long "democracy" would take to install, the coalition sent out a big love-letter to all arms-for-hire to bring the action Baghdad's way. Iraq becomes less a country, and more a metaphor for general discontent: a fantasy zone for both deluded politicians and assassins for hire. Both players forget (or, more likely, don't care) the virtual space they inhabit is filled with civilians who care for neither side's POV. Now it's just a chance to bring the game to America on foreign soil, safe in the knowledge that the States won't give up without clearing the board. Because the hired guns can leave whenever they like. Any genuine or paid complaint can be acted out in Iraq whenever the complainer is ready, and they know they have the world's attention for the first time in their lives.

Ultimately, however, it's just another car bomb report in the morning bulletin. When someone has to kill to make a point, the point doesn't really matter any more.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:23 am

Future daze

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