Conclusion : tout le monde est partisan de la guerre et de sa poursuite…

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Il s’agit d’une situation extraordinaire, après tant d’années de déboires, de défaites, de mises en évidence de la catastrophe irakienne et de ses conséquences horriblement destructrices. A la lumière de l’enquête de Glenn Greenwald sur la tromperie complète que constitue l’intervention de la paire O’Hanlon-Pollack, et sur la façon dont tout l’establishment washingtonien l’acueillit avec enthousiasme comme l’expression d’une vérité soudain révélée, David Bromwich expose sur le site HuffingtonPost.com sa conviction qui est en réalité une vérité objective que tout le monde, aujourd’hui à Washington, favorise la poursuite de cette guerre catastrophique.

L’article de Browmich, très court, très incisif, met les choses abslument à nu et présente justement cette période, depuis l’article O’Hanlon-Plllack du 30 juillet, comme un tournant. Finalement, personne ne veut entendre parler de la réalité, et la guerre se poursuivra, obstinément, sans ralentir, dans l’espoir, dans la certitude même que la réalité se pliera enfin à la représentation du monde et de cette catastrophe que se fait l’establishment. Il s'agit d'un spasme belliciste et de vanité américaniste révélateur après plusieurs mois de doutes et de pressions pour un retrait d'Irak, depuis les élections de de novembre 2006. Revenant sur cette “faiblesse”, l'establishmentD> revient à sa posture belliciste. Plus que jamais, l’impasse décrite par Gabriel Kolko est complètement, définitivement verrouillée.

«Glenn Greenwald's most recent post at Salon about the O'Hanlon-Pollack op-ed is worth looking up: a summary of the conditions of their seven and a half days in Iraq. It turns out to have been an army-guided tour from start to finish. In a political world that valued honesty, the reputations of both men would now be smoking rubble; for it is plain that neither, going into the trip, possessed the slightest local knowledge of Iraq beyond that of a citizen of average diligence. The questions they posed to army officers and their Iraqi adjuncts, plus a few “safe” civilian informants lined up by the Department of Defense, all took the form: “So how are things going? Do you believe things are really improving?” A probing follow-up (according to O'Hanlon) took the more stringent form: “Are you really sure?”

»And yet this farrago — a booster-brochure that ballooned to a thousand words and ten thousand commendations — was published by the newspaper of record. It did the trick, and turned the tide.

»In the last three weeks, it seems, the whole American establishment from Time (cover story, July 30) to the New York Times (lead editorial today), from the Brookings Institution (where O'Hanlon and Pollack are resident scholars) to the American Enterprise Institute, and from the leading Democrats to the leading Republicans in the race for president — all these entities and persons have implicitly agreed on the proposition: No significant troop reductions through 2008.

»Such sudden and total adjustments of the vast body of centrist opinion, over so short a period, are fascinating to trace the causes of. In December 2006, it appeared that the war in Iraq had crept up to 1970 on the Vietnam clock; the case against further devastation had been made, and the argument could turn to the logistics of withdrawal. Now the clock is back to 1965. The president and his general have been given permission. The next step is sure to be an increase in the destructiveness of the air war.

»Our new chamber of echoes comes from every imaginable source except conscience. Partly, they are saying these things from the sheer, anxious, binding power of conformity (the name of its god, for now, is Petraeus). But it is also the case that many policy adepts —“experts” on the O'Hanlon-Pollack model of expertise — have been shown something ordinary Americans are not being permitted to see. There is now an agreed-on, long-term U.S. strategy for the Middle East, which requires a large military presence in Iraq as a permanent base of operations.»


Mis en ligne le 14 août 2007 à 07H18