THIS MODERN WORLD

Here’s Nir Rosen on Zarqawi. Rosen is almost unique among Western journalists in having direct contact with the Iraqi insurgency:

So time to dispel some myths. Zarqawi did not really belong to al Qaeda. He would have been more shocked than anybody when Colin Powel spoke before the United Nations in the propaganda build up to the war and mentioned Zarqawi publicly for the first time, accusing him of being the link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Zarqawi in fact did not get along with Bin Ladin when he met him years earlier. He found Bin Ladin and the Taliban insufficiently extreme and refused to join al Qaeda or ally himself with Bin Ladin, setting up his own base in western Afghanistan instead, from where he fled to the autonomous area of Kurdistan in Iraq, outside of Saddam’s control, following the US attacks on Taliban controlled Afghanistan in late 2001. Zarqawi only went down into Iraq proper when the Americans liberated it for him. He had nothing to do with al Qaeda until December 2004, when he renamed his organization Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or Al Qaeda in Iraq as it has become known.

Why did he do this? It was a great deal for him and Bin Ladin. Zarqawi needed the prestige associated with the Al Qaeda brand name in global jihadi circles….For Bin Ladin and his deputy Zawahiri it was also a great deal. Al Qaeda was defunct. Its leadership hiding in the Pakistani wilderness, completely cut off from the main front in today’s jihad, Iraq. When Zarqawi assumed the al Qaeda brand name he gave a needed fillip to Bin Ladin who could now associate himself with the Iraqi jihad, where the enemy was being successfully killed every day, and where the eyes of the Arab and Muslim world were turned to, far more than Afghanistan.

Zarqawi was not very important in the first place, and hardly represented the majority of the resistance or insurgency…It took the United States to make Zarqawi who he became. Intent on denying that there was a popular Iraqi resistance to the American project in Iraq, the Americans blamed every attack on Zarqawi and his foreign fighters, and for a while it seemed every car accident in Baghdad was Zarqawi’s fault. The truth was that much of Iraq’s Sunni population, alienated by the Americans who removed them from power and targeted them en masse during raids, supported and participated in the anti American resistance. Even many Shias claimed resistance. Muqtada Sadr, the most powerful and popular single individual leader in Iraq, led two “intifadas” against the Americans in the spring and summer of 2004, and his men still rest on their laurels, claiming they too took part in the Mukawama, or resistance. But by blaming Zarqawi for everything the Americans created the myth of Zarqawi and aspiring Jihadis throughout the Arab world ate it up and flocked to join his ranks or at least send money. Zarqawi was the one defying the Americans, something their own weak leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and elsewhere, could not do, having sold out long ago. It was then comical when the Americans released the Zarqawi video out-takes and mocked him for fumbling with a machine gun. Having inflated his reputation they were now trying to deflate it. But it was too late.

The rest is here. Also, don’t miss Rosen’s website or his new book, In the Belly of the Green Bird.

Many visitors here may already be familiar with Red State Son, Dennis Perrin’s unique blog. But for anyone who isn’t, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Dennis is a longtime commentator on politics—he was on the writing staff of Politically Incorrect in its early, funny incarnation—and author of two books: Mr. Mike, a biography of SNL’s Michael O’Donoghue, and American Fan, about our frenzied sports culture.

That alone would indicate Dennis is an interesting dude. But there’s much, much more to him. Start with this: “Atoning at Night: A Janitor’s Tale”.

Then you could move on to “Reggie White Wash” about Reggie White’s heart full of hate; “Punchy”, about Christopher Hitchens’ propensity to rewrite his own past; “Sad Libs”; “Freedom Granted, Freedom Won”; and more!

After that, if you’re so moved you might send Dennis a few bucks. I’ve been trying for seeming years to persuade him to promote himself—just getting him to put up a pay pal button has been like pulling teeth. Our little corner of the world can only grow stronger if we support each other, and Dennis is someone we need in the fight.

So Elisabeth Bumiller is leaving the White House beat for the New York Times. I’d like to mark this sad occasion by recalling my tribute to her from eighteen months ago.

• • •

I’ve had a crush on Bumiller for some time, but she truly won my heart when she explained why reporters asked Bush no hard questions at his press conference just before the invasion of Iraq. You see, they’re cowards:

ELISABETH BUMILLER: I think we were very deferential, because in the East Room press conference, it’s live. It’s very intense. It’s frightening to stand up there… You are standing up on prime time live television, asking the president of the United States a question when the country is about to go to war.

There are several entertaining things about this:

1. I’m sure it’s scary to ask the president a question on live national TV just before a war. But…

(a) If you can’t handle it, maybe you should get another job. It’s also “intense” to be an NFL quarterback and, whenever you drop back to pass, have six men weighing a collective ton trying to crush you. But if this makes you stay at home in bed on Superbowl Sunday, perhaps professional football is not for you.

(b) As scary as it may be to ask the president a question just before a war, I’ve heard tell it’s even scarier to FIGHT IN A WAR. It may be scarier still to be in a country about to invaded by the most powerful military in human history, and know you and your family may soon be converted into scraps of red, wet flesh. Perhaps Bumiller could think of this at such times and fucking get ahold of herself.

2. The New York Times has been owned by the same family for 108 years. When they bought it, the new publisher Adolph Ochs wrote a famous front page editorial:

It will be my earnest aim that The New York Times… give the news impartially, without fear or favor…

“Without fear or favor” is so much a part of the Times self-image that it was used as the title of an authorized history of the paper. Yet Bumiller explicitly acknowledges giving the news with fear. And we can throw in favor too, because “favor” is quite close to “deference,” as thesauruses will tell you.

So Bumiller very publicly whizzed all over her employers’ founding credo. For this, she retains one of the New York Times’ highest profile and most prestigious positions. But I guess this makes sense in a country where you can only be Attorney General if you hate the Constitution.

“LOOKED LIKE A SMUG, BARKING COW”: This was Matt Taibbi’s characterization of Bumiller when when he crowned her winner of 2004’s Wimblehack competition.

AND SERIOUSLY: I do respect Bumiller for being honest about the fear felt by reporters like herself. The Bush administration and its lovely friends certainly do try to generate this fear, and I’d far rather have journalists speak openly of it than continue their standard pose of being courageous crusaders for truth.

Yesterday was the 38th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s shooting by Sirhan Sirhan. (Kennedy lived for a few more hours, and actually died 38 years ago today.) Mike Gerber has some compelling thoughts about that and the rest of the greatest hits of the sixties:

When I think of the assassinations now, there is no curiosity or nostalgia; because they have never been definitively solved, I feel that they are still with us. History is fact robbed of its ability to injure; these events still bite. And so, when I saw RFK on Slate today, the long-haired, doom-etched RFK of ’68, I felt the bite again, and not a little dread. JFK’s death was about the unthinkable happening, but his brother’s murder was the world confirming the terrible fact of what it had become. Or maybe, what it always had been.

Forty years on, Kennedy-King-Kennedy looks to me like the moment things started going bad, when control really clamped down from above, and apathy really took root below. Our country is headed in the wrong direction, and without a shred of romanticism, I think that direction was set by the assassinations of the 60s–not only by the loss of those people, their ideas and their ability to inspire, but also by our getting used to unsolved public murder as business as usual. That is a coarsening equal to any suffered by the Roman Republic. Is it merely coincidence that we’ve turned from a country of possibilities to one grinding out the same tragic, hoary imperial script? The country is traumatized, directionless, hurt; and a generation of politicians have risen who are experts at keeping us that way.

We go around in circles, searching for Kennedy-manques, a right wheel turning around a chewed stump where the left wheel used to be. If you don’t like metaphors, here’s a fact: All of the “lone nuts” of the 60s weakened one side of the spectrum, in favor of the other. We may think that’s a mournful coincidence now, but I doubt future generations will.

And that’s not even mentioning Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton and quite a few others who, out of the purest coincidence, all got shot in the head.

The rest is here.

I’m heading out to Yearly Kos tomorrow. Looks like Air America will be streaming the whole thing, so for a small fee, you can watch the panels and workshops, and even my little dog-and-pony show, from the comfort of your own home.

Because you know the slogan: what happens in Vegas gets posted on the internet for everyone to watch.

Anyway, I doubt I’ll put much up this week, so my guest bloggers should feel free to step up to the plate, if they’re so inclined.