Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Iraq War: Cultic studies, terrorism and guerrilla warfare

David Neiwert has an very thought-provoking piece at his Orcinus blog on Waco in Iraq, the Waco reference being to the ultimately tragic standoff with David Koresh's Branch Davidian cult in Waco TX in 1993.  It's cross-posted at the American Streeet blog, the one featuring the cool Faulkner picture.

Neiwert applies some of the lessons from his own studies of violent far-right groups with insights from those who have expertise in apocalyptic cults to speculate on what approach to defusing the current situation in the Iraqi city of Najaf might be most effective.  It's part of a larger series of posts looking at the lessons that we've learned from domestic terrorist acts and how those might be useful in the so-called "war on terrorism."

His long post contains an interesting analysis of Waco and of the "Waco" image in the public mind.  Part of his conclusion:

The al-Najaf problem is a microcosm of the larger problem of the Bush administration's misbegotten approach to dealing with terrorism. Rather than recognize the assymetrical, often corpuscular nature of terrorism and come to terms with its origins in unaddressed grievances with an intelligent strategy that undermines those sources and does not inflame and worsen them, Bush has taken a course precisely 180 degrees removed: Use the brute force and bludgeoning power of the military, largely in the vain hope of asserting American dominance as a way of discouraging anyone from challenging it.

In that sense, the entire misadventure in Iraq resembles the fiasco at Waco: Too impatient to let inspections and diplomacy work their course, Bush ordered a military invasion of another nation without reckoning all of the consequences of doing so. Most significant among those consequences is the high likelihood of actually undermining any serious effort at actually attacking terrorism at the source.

It's an excellent post.  I should mention, though, that towards the end, he buys into the conventional wisdom promoted this week by the Washington Post that Bush's wonderful "oratory" is bolstering support for the Iraq War. 

Hello!  Did any of the people writing this stuff watch Commander-in-Chief Bush in his bumbling press conference a couple of weeks ago?  Ruy Texeira has pointed out a another defect in this analysis:

There's only one slight problem with this: the American public, by any reasonable standard is turning against the war. Now you could reasonably say that support for the war effort has not completely collapsed, despite the recent string of bad news. Or that Bush's rhetoric is helping slow the rate of decline. Or that his "oratory" helped contribute to the recent rally effect that may have elevated Bush in the polls by a few points. But you can't say the public isn't turning against the war, because they are.

And, no, "cultic studies" is not a term I made up.

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