[Newspoetry] There is no nation of Iraq, there are no Iraqi people -- there's only a state of mind.

[DL Emerick]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/  Galbraith piece on July 17, 2007

IRAQI FICTION
"We need to recognize, as Lugar implicitly does, that Iraq no longer exists
as a unified country."  Quote from Galbraith piece, on your blog.

What we truly need to recognize is the force of history in the Mesopotamian
region.  Look at any map of the region before World War I.  There was no
Iraq there.  Iraq was the name given to a chunk of land awarded to the
British, as reparations-damages against the old Turkish-Ottoman Empire.
Iraq was a fiction, created in the waning years of colonialism and its
accompanying practices of imperialism.

Hence, Galbraith continually notes (almost as a shtick) what was always
true: IRAQ HAS NEVER EXISTED, not as a sense of any one people with a sense
of being one nation, together.

Now, it is true that International Law (IL) recognizes nations by a somewhat
different, even more practical, standard.  Under the prevalent scheme of IL,
a "nation" is constituted by the fact that some group (nominally, a
government) has effective "control" of some (generally contiguous)
geographic territory.

However, surely, as studies of "nationalism" maintain, that definition of
"nation" is -- however pragmatic -- vastly lacking in guidance to Statesmen,
conflating the usually armed force of State power with the sense of
rightness among those who fall into that region.  For, in essence, we
believe in freedom, no people should be coerced in the most fundamental
matters of life, to obey the dictates of any State.  Hence, for believers in
freedom, a "nation" is that group of people who generally agree as to what
such fundamental matters of life are.  Only for a "nation" is it possible
for government to occur by consent of the governed, or for laws to be obeyed
without great reliance by the State upon the policing instruments of force.

President Wilson, for better or worse, had a set of ideas centered on the
principle: new states ought to be "nations".  He spoke of "Nations" and not
of "States" and proposed a League of the former, to keep the peace of the
world between its many peoples.  But, his ideas were often betrayed and
corrupted, as in the case of the resultant "Iraq".

The leaders of States, some of which may be nations, must thus again
confront the very question, with regard to the Mesopotamian region: Who
shall govern, there, in that very place?  Clearly, the choices are starkly
in contrast: one central government maintained by force against some large
part of all the people (the present and previous Iraqs) or else some real
partition of the present Iraqi state, along national lines - a Kurdish
state, a Sunni state, and a Shiite state.

IRAQ IS NOT A NATION.  This is a critical fact of history.  HOWEVER, IRAQ IS
A STATE, presently.  That, too, is a critical fact of history, but a far
less critical one, even so.  That is, this latter fact is merely an
artifact, a convenience of state.  This fiction (of Iraqi Statehood) thus is
at war with longer term realities of history, that there truly are no "IRAQI
PEOPLE".

Wisdom in Washington will come only when our leaders cease to respond to the
fictive facts of what has been made "real" only by words, for that "reality"
is formalistic, legalistic, formulaic.  In short, IRAQ is theoretic, or
hypothetic -- a supposition that does not actually accord with much of the
rest of "truer" reality -- the lived experiences of the common man.

Perhaps, in the long run, the texts of all history show us how partial
theories ever lead to violence, conflicts and wars against ultimate and
total reality, of the ever mistaken struggles, necessarily and, yet,
unnecessarily, arising when formalisms are taken too far.  When formalisms
substitute for reality, too much, we find ourselves dealing only with the
haunting ghosts of our own failed histories.

THERE IS NO IRAQ.  This is a truth that Bush will never see, as he lacks
conceptual understandings of such matters as states and nations, of peoples
and freedom, of force and peace.  Some would say that he only lacks an
adequate education in these most fundamental topics of political theory --
but the implication is the same.

THERE IS A BUSH WHO BELIEVES THAT ARMED FORCE IS THE MAGIC GLUE OF POLITICS,
EVEN OF STATEHOOD.  Bush believes that Might may make anything Right, but
only if a Leader, such as he imagines himself to be, truly desires that
outcome and persists in pursuit of it.  This belief -- born from the
supplemented matrix of the Will to Power, sired by a corrupt paternalism
that often succors capitalism -- is most fundamentally the truest cause of
the present War in Mesopotamia.

War in the Mesopotamian region will not end until Bush and his crony cadre
(Cheney, e.g.) are replaced.  We can wait until January 20, 2009 -- or we
can remove his cast, by conviction for a variety of his impeachable offenses
against the US.  Instead of debating a date for removal from Iraq, we should
be debating a date for the removal of Bush, et. al.  The reason for this is
simple: Bush as President is also only a fiction, a legality or formality
but lacking of any great substance.  Bush is a fictional President, and a
much failed one, at that.  We can then return to reality and make historical
progress again, when we finally dismiss him and his crew.  I say "Let's do
that today!"

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