Osborne Russel
12-08-2005, 03:29 PM
The cliques, camarillas, mafias, cabalas, or as the Italians often call them, consorterie, as well as the more honorable but just as unofficial organizations to which the people entrust their security are not always chosen consciously . . . (nevertheless) such bonds are so strict that that people who would naturally be enemies back home (born in rival towns or in rival quarters of the same town) immediately become allies and accomplices in alien surroundings . . .The same feeling binds almost all Italians under a foreign tyranny perhaps more strongly than the inhabitants of any other country in the same predicament. The French, the Dutch, the Danes naturally tried to help each other against the German occupation during the last war. None however were trained so well by history to violate all laws, to understand each other at a glance and to combine their efforts against the occupying authorities as the Italians. They already knew all the tricks. Only a tiny and unreliable minority sided with the Wehrmacht. The great majority spontaneously and immediately behaved as if they were all long-lost cousins. Anybody anywhere could find refuge without fear in the first farm house he came to. The same privileges were extended to the Allied escaped prisoners, as many of them can testify, not only because of the ideals they represented, but also because they, being persecuted by the Germans, had somehow become honorary Italians.
Luigi Barzini, *The Italians* (1964) Simon & Schuster, New York, p. 218.What do suppose would have happened if the defeat of the Germans and ouster of Mussolini had been followed by an American occupation of Italy? What price "victory"?
Note the close parallels and important lessons for the current situation. The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds have three things in common, besides the circumstance of being thrown together as a fake nation:
1. They hate Saddam
2. They hate each other.
3. They trust no "national" government, because in view of #2, only a Saddam-like national government can survive.
So long as America helps with #1, they cooperate. America cannot help with #2. If America displaces Saddam and becomes an occupier, we have a new #1, i.e., they all hate America. ”Even people who would naturally be enemies . . . trained so well by history to violate all laws, to understand each other at a glance and to combine their efforts against the occupying authorities . . . Anybody anywhere could find refuge without fear in the first farm house he came to.”
Into this world of “cliques, camarillas, mafias, cabalas, or as the Italians often call them, consorterie” steps the Bush Administration, confident that the "average Iraqi" has been eager all along to abandon the carefully constructed web of allegiances and alliances among these non-governmental (usually anti-governmental) associations that provided the only security possible under the Turks, then the British and French, then Saddam, in favor of “freedom” from such antiquated trash because America as an occupier is so much more skillful an occupier than her predecessors, and is capable of rendering them unnecessary after a few short years, a constitution, and a few elections. Come what may, the American troops will be gone, by 2008. By then the Iraqi people will have learned to trust their security to elected officials governing in the name of all Iraq, including the hated enemies across town. The former antagonists will automatically recognize their common interest in this modernization, disarm themselves, and abandon their traditional loyalties. They'll be happy to have their former enemies join the police and the army, acquire arms, collect taxes, and enforce the law.
It would be arrogance and hubris if it weren’t simple ignorance. But ignorance on this stupendous scale is difficult to describe merely as ignorance. Paranoia . . . psychosis . . . you tell me.
I understand Signor Barzini’s pride in asserting that the Italians of all people were best prepared to bugger, bleed and frustrate their foreign occupiers and their domestic occupiers (the fascists) at the same time. Their great delight is to defeat governmental authority by flattery, trickery, lying, stealing, sabotage, and all arts of dealing with people they consider to be occupiers, including temporary alliances with their natural enemies.
Now we’ll see how good the Iraqis are at sabotaging occupation. The ones left alive by the Saddam years are for that very reason likely to be the ones most adept at maintaining the power of their cliques in defiance of whatever national government puts forth the claim of acting in the name of the “sovereign Iraqi people.” That is a fiction which only people outside Iraq can afford.
Nevertheless, we must continue to pursue victory. In the war, or occupation, or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be.
Luigi Barzini, *The Italians* (1964) Simon & Schuster, New York, p. 218.What do suppose would have happened if the defeat of the Germans and ouster of Mussolini had been followed by an American occupation of Italy? What price "victory"?
Note the close parallels and important lessons for the current situation. The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds have three things in common, besides the circumstance of being thrown together as a fake nation:
1. They hate Saddam
2. They hate each other.
3. They trust no "national" government, because in view of #2, only a Saddam-like national government can survive.
So long as America helps with #1, they cooperate. America cannot help with #2. If America displaces Saddam and becomes an occupier, we have a new #1, i.e., they all hate America. ”Even people who would naturally be enemies . . . trained so well by history to violate all laws, to understand each other at a glance and to combine their efforts against the occupying authorities . . . Anybody anywhere could find refuge without fear in the first farm house he came to.”
Into this world of “cliques, camarillas, mafias, cabalas, or as the Italians often call them, consorterie” steps the Bush Administration, confident that the "average Iraqi" has been eager all along to abandon the carefully constructed web of allegiances and alliances among these non-governmental (usually anti-governmental) associations that provided the only security possible under the Turks, then the British and French, then Saddam, in favor of “freedom” from such antiquated trash because America as an occupier is so much more skillful an occupier than her predecessors, and is capable of rendering them unnecessary after a few short years, a constitution, and a few elections. Come what may, the American troops will be gone, by 2008. By then the Iraqi people will have learned to trust their security to elected officials governing in the name of all Iraq, including the hated enemies across town. The former antagonists will automatically recognize their common interest in this modernization, disarm themselves, and abandon their traditional loyalties. They'll be happy to have their former enemies join the police and the army, acquire arms, collect taxes, and enforce the law.
It would be arrogance and hubris if it weren’t simple ignorance. But ignorance on this stupendous scale is difficult to describe merely as ignorance. Paranoia . . . psychosis . . . you tell me.
I understand Signor Barzini’s pride in asserting that the Italians of all people were best prepared to bugger, bleed and frustrate their foreign occupiers and their domestic occupiers (the fascists) at the same time. Their great delight is to defeat governmental authority by flattery, trickery, lying, stealing, sabotage, and all arts of dealing with people they consider to be occupiers, including temporary alliances with their natural enemies.
Now we’ll see how good the Iraqis are at sabotaging occupation. The ones left alive by the Saddam years are for that very reason likely to be the ones most adept at maintaining the power of their cliques in defiance of whatever national government puts forth the claim of acting in the name of the “sovereign Iraqi people.” That is a fiction which only people outside Iraq can afford.
Nevertheless, we must continue to pursue victory. In the war, or occupation, or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be.